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A dark studio apartment.
Only the blue glow of the monitor lit the room.
1st place: Ghost Story Anthology
2nd place: Monster King
3rd place: Backroom
4th place: Secret of the Sky
5th place: SuccuSuccu
6th place: Dancing with Dharma
7th place: I’m Not an Old Man
8th place: Red Boots
9th place: Our Dog Doesn’t Bite
10th place: GreenGreenGreen
.
.
.
100th place: King of Steel
The ranking board was the final accounting ledger for how well each dungeon had been managed over a season in Dungeon Masters.
Looking at the ID GreenGreenGreen pinned on one side of the ranking window, a sigh slipped out of him.
“Ahh... tenth place again, huh?”
Again.
10th in Season 15.
10th in Season 14.
11th in Season 13.
13th in Season 12.
The rank that had been climbing little by little had suddenly slammed into an invisible wall and stopped.
The top nine. He could never get past those monsters, always stuck in place at tenth.
The problem was the ghost-story builds.
Ghost Story Anthology. Monster King. Backroom.
Most of the upper ranks belonged to the owners of ghost-story dungeons.
Grotesque, murky, and the kind of thing that left you helpless if you didn’t know the strategy.
“Should I start researching ghost-story builds too...”
His own GreenSkin wasn’t bad.
Tenth place was, without question, a respectable result.
But whenever he looked at those three, he felt painfully ordinary.
GreenSkin.
Orcs, goblins, ogres.
A traditional war-style build that smashed forward with brute force and numbers.
The problem was—
ghost stories weren’t something you simply smashed apart with strength.
And what ghost stories loved most were stupid things with lots of bodies.
That was why there was no one in the same rank bracket as him among those who handled GreenSkin.
Maybe it really was the weakest in terms of potential.
But all of it came down to ghost stories.
Honestly... going head-to-head with ghost stories is impossible.
Ordinary ghost stories didn’t scare him.
Poorly made, generic ones were common, and most had already been countered by collective intelligence.
But the top three kept bringing in strange ghost stories on a regular basis and building entire dungeons around them.
Twisted stories, almost unbeatable ones.
As far as he was concerned, those three at the top were geniuses.
He knew that because they had fought each other dozens of times.
In Season 16, because their territories were close, he had fought Monster King pretty fiercely.
“Tsk... I threw away hundreds of thousands, and I don’t even know how much damage I did.”
Ghost-story dungeons were, in truth, almost impossible if you didn’t know the method of clearing them.
Whenever he had the breathing room, he used Dungeon Masters battle content to attack Monster King’s dungeon, luring out monsters and sending in waves—but in the end, he got turned inside out instead.
He had almost thought his core was about to explode and he’d get wiped out in one shot.
“Haah... will the glory of GreenSkin always be out of reach?”
When he was younger, playing a game called War 3, he had fallen in love with the appeal of GreenSkin.
That was why he’d named his ID GreenGreenGreen and taken up GreenSkin as his faction.
He became the best GreenSkin player around,
and with his own GreenSkin build,
he had climbed as high as 10th place in Dungeon Masters.
But he had reached his limit.
He always lost.
To ghost stories.
To beat them, he felt the raw power of GreenSkin alone wasn’t enough.
He needed someone who wasn’t as brute-minded as he was.
Someone clever.
“Haa... is there some brilliant freak out there who can build GreenSkin in a fresh way?”
He rummaged through the board, hoping for inspiration.
Unfortunately, these days there were few people who understood the charm of GreenSkin.
Search for GreenSkin, and the board would spit out elves.
“Why are green-skinned elves called GreenSkin, you idiots...”
Their brains must be made of udon noodles, he thought as he looked at the elves who would die before obeying dungeon orders. They claimed that watching the elves was good for the eyes, and that looking at those pretty-boy bastards purified the heart, too.
Ridiculous.
Strength that obeyed orders was the only truth.
Even as he browsed the board, GreenSkin was still a minor, unpopular build.
Only a tiny number made it into the rankings.
Then he saw a post with his ID on it.
His hand moved before he even thought about it.
-------------------------
Title: GreenGreenGreen hit 10th place! Is GreenSkin about to surge?
Visualizing the 16th season situation.
[A picture of goblins being chased by Monster King]
Lol, look at this. This time, GreenGreenGreen’s main base got raided twice.
See? Yep, I’m not touching GreenSkin. That’s garbage~
----------------------------------
It was a trivial post, but it still stung.
“Haa...”
This season. Last season.
To understand ghost stories, he had attacked the dungeons of higher-ranked players.
The moment he entered the ghost-story dungeons of Backroom and Monster King—
Hundreds of thousands of troops.
Orcs, goblins, ogres.
Every one of them was a fourth-class unit.
And yet—
Before the ghost stories, they were nothing but scarecrows.
“...They made a fool of me.”
Without knowing the clear method, ghost stories were an impregnable fortress.
As long as he didn’t know the strategy, even an army of tens of thousands would just melt away on impact.
By the time his elite ogre unit had been wiped out under the pretense of being the last line, the ghost-story army had counterattacked and stripped the dungeon bare.
To anyone watching, it might have looked like he’d kicked a hornet’s nest.
But war with ghost stories was an unavoidable constant.
Ghost-story dungeons loved dungeons filled with living things.
Maybe that was why—strangely enough—every player in those ghost-story dungeons always seemed to target him and him alone.
Was GreenSkin the easiest to pick on?
Before he reached the rankings, when he hadn’t yet fully refined the build, all he could do was fend off the relentless onslaught of ghost stories.
It was common for a third of the dozens of dungeon floors to be taken over by ghost stories.
Still, thanks to the monstrous recovery power that was a feature of GreenSkin dungeons and his own unique build, that much damage wasn’t a major blow.
Thinking about fighting ghost-story dungeons made him feel stifled.
“At this rate, I don’t think I’ll get past the wall next time either...”
It wasn’t as if he’d never tried researching ways to grow stronger.
But—
“There are just too many build contents.”
He was almost the only uniquely type-shaped GreenSkin dungeon out there.
And other ghost-story dungeons, while all fitting the same ghost-story frame, were each unique in their own way.
“This is what happens in a god-tier game. You’ve got to be prepared.”
There had never been a game like this.
The operators responded twenty-four hours a day.
They consulted on builds,
made skills for you,
and even customized monsters.
For those who disliked multiplayer, there was a single-player option.
VR access was possible through a VR device, bugs were almost nonexistent, and when they did appear, patches came out immediately. The cash shop only sold skins that didn’t affect gameplay, along with a battle pass—basically a pack of cigarettes’ worth of spending.
Most importantly—
you couldn’t buy stats with money.
The operators discussed user suggestions with one another, balancing them and patching frequently.
Just from that alone, it was a god-tier game.
So.
As a user, it was only natural to participate every season and spend a reasonable amount to support the operators.
If there was a downside, it was that the operators worked so hard that there were countless builds, and the combinations of those builds were like the stars in the night sky.
Because of that, the fragments of builds were almost infinite, and figuring out which of those near-infinite fragments had anything to do with ghost stories was a ghost story in itself.
There were basic ghost-story dungeon builds on the internet, of course...
The real ones are hidden.
When Season 16 ended, it was time for the Season 17 server to open.
Before starting, he bought the season pass.
He planned to participate at full strength again in Season 17, too.
This time, he intended to set a plan and go on the offensive.
“Let’s refine the build a bit more.”
Rather than patching the weaknesses, he decided to strengthen the advantages instead, and while reviewing the notes he’d made during his research, he kept taking deep breaths and sharpening his plan until only a short time remained before Season 17 began.
-Ding~
A private message arrived from the operators.
GM Baekdusan
Because you, GreenGreenGreen, have successfully maintained 10th place in the rankings three or more times, we would like to offer you a new opportunity.
You will begin on a new map rather than the existing one, Fantasy, and a special bonus will be provided.
The GM’s message continued with all sorts of lengthy explanations.
“See? The operators really do understand their users!”
The reason he worked to improve his ranking was for opportunities like this.
There were quite a few special privileges reserved for those with high rankings.
He read the GM’s message.
“A new bonus?”
Dungeon Masters rarely gave out bonuses with any truly special merit.
Reading further, he learned that the continent starting this time had a higher average difficulty than Fantasy, so they were letting players use a system that would normally be introduced later.
“Nice.”
He didn’t know what the new system was, but he wondered if it might be a new way to deal with ghost stories.
The ruler of the dungeon industry was ghost stories, so there was no way Dungeon Masters, which pursued balance, would deliberately strengthen them.
Variables like this were always welcome.
If it could help him defeat ghost stories!
Thinking that, he applied to join and then—
pressed the button to create a character for Season 17 of Dungeon Masters.
The ID, as always, was the same.
GreenGreenGreen
-To paint the world in the glory of GreenSkin!
As usual, he started selecting the same name and dungeon parts.
The green race, life, resilience, buildings, and so on.
Along with the usual choices he used for a GreenSkin dungeon, he selected the keywords he’d chosen during this round of research to raise elite quality.
And then.
The newly added bonus appeared on the screen.
“A dungeon boss, huh...”
A dungeon had a being called a boss.
Normally, the boss was simply whichever monster in the dungeon he chose as the strongest one.
When it became a boss, its HP increased and its attack power was strengthened.
That was all it had been—until now.
The new dungeon boss system was a little different.
There was a boss bonus.
Right on cue, several monsters caught his eye in the boss slot.
Various monsters—Orc King, Troll King, Ogre King, even Goblin Emperor.
He had gathered plenty of GreenSkin monsters.
But nothing felt right.
“They’ve all lost to ghost stories, and none of them are lacking in brute strength, but...”
The boss bonuses were all focused on individual strength.
Not bad, he thought.
But they didn’t suit the build he had in mind.
“If I want a king, I can make one later. The boss bonus just means I can get a boss early in the opening.”
From a late-game perspective, the bonus barely mattered at all.
He wasn’t going to use a half-baked early rush tactic against ghost stories—that would be foolish—so he rejected the idea of choosing an ordinary boss.
By default, ghost stories were always stronger than GreenSkin in the early game.
Well, they were strong later too.
At a time like this, there was a late-game boss character available.
Dragon of Evolving Life
It was a boss that specifically needed long-term login and growth while playing the game.
Because growth took so long, it was hard to fully develop it in a normal run.
But it suited someone with unlimited time like him.
It was a dragonkin with strong stats and bonuses that would help the dungeon.
“Choose the Dragon of Evolving Life.”
A dragon race with green scales and the power to manipulate life.
That’s GreenSkin.
If you object, then you’re saying white skin is red skin.
He proceeded with the rest of the settings as usual.
And when he pressed start—
Congratulations on being chosen, Player Dohyun.
“Huh?... The operator? This is the first time they’ve contacted me like this.”
He had heard that sometimes a surprise event would interrupt the start of the game.
“Is this because it’s a new map?”
As a word of advice, you only have one life, so please act with caution.
“What? Did they add hardcore mode or something?”
There had been rumors that a mode could be created where, once you made a character and exited, you’d be locked out for the rest of the season.
“That’s a bit much...”
The GreenSkin guild sometimes got their core stripped clean early on.
Every time that happened, he had to restart.
If that were impossible, it would be heartbreaking.
I hate hardcore...
Beep—!
The screen that was just starting up suddenly flashed a blue screen.
It felt like it had been years since he’d changed the computer that had just drifted past, but...
He had the sense that it had finally run out of fate.
“Aaaaah! Damn it! Is this thing broken?”
He wanted to deny it.
This couldn’t be happening now.
“Hey, this is not the time for this!”
Instinctively, he slammed the monitor.
Crack.
Along with the sound of something breaking, electricity ran from his fingertips through his entire body.
“Aaaahhh!”
The world twisted.
And then—
when he opened his eyes,
he was inside a dark cave.