The Season of DeoEn
(Screenshot of the official Devil of Angel site announcement)
A game that only pushed one major update a year and never touched anything beyond trivial events suddenly rolls out an update? And for the reason of "system stabilization," no less?
The moment I heard Lily going on about "stability" and "problems that came up," I knew it was because of her. Am I right?
Look, DeoEn's stamina and health systems make you genuinely exhausted like in real life, but honestly, fine, whatever. I can live with that.
But then hidden classes and racial traits started carrying mental-related penalties, and the controversy exploded. Leo is practically a different person in-game versus real life.
And back then, nobody said a single word about "stabilization." Then the second Yena collapses, suddenly there's an update?
Isn't DeoEn starting to bleed into reality at this point?
Lily pushed herself too hard using a skill a while back and collapsed, then went dark for a day or two. And this time, the moment Yena went down, Lily's face turned dead serious.
There's really something wrong here, right?
Fortunately, Yena had come through unscathed. I paid a visit to her place right after the lecture to check on her myself, and by all appearances she'd be back in action within a week or so.
For the record, the Spear's Roar homework I'd assigned her was struck from the record — or more precisely, marked down as already complete. True, she'd only pulled it off because the system's restraints had been loosened. But looked at from the other side, that meant she'd possessed the talent to succeed long ago, if only the system hadn't been holding her back.
The price nearly cost her her life, of course.
"Then what about the Green Hermit...?"
"Keep using it until I've gathered everything I need."
"Whoa."
Yena had been delighted even while lying flat on her back, and we agreed I'd hand over the rest once she logged back into DeoEn. For now, the priority was for her to rest and not push herself for nothing.
"...Come to think of it."
I was reading a post linked in my Discord channel. Posted just today, on the official Devil of Angel site.
Emergency Update — System Stabilization.
A post with a short, terse title — and an atmosphere markedly different from anything they usually published. The whole thing was five lines or fewer.
"The stability of existing systems will be further reinforced, and systems that previously failed to apply under certain conditions have been adjusted to apply accordingly..."
Hmm. Scrrrll.
There wasn't a trace of the usual embellishment. This had to have been written by someone other than the regular site administrator.
Which would mean...
I gazed out through the window. Even across the considerable distance past the Han River, one building rose so high it was impossible to miss.
Nutri Company.
And among its floors, the very topmost one caught my eye.
At this point, I had a pretty good idea what was going on.
"...Not that I can just charge in there."
At the very top of that tower, there was something that wasn't human.
A week went by. Yena returned to streaming under the room title "YenaLand Rises Again!", and I carried on with my own broadcasts, juggling dungeon runs and ranked matches. Viewers kept asking about Yena, about me, and about the sudden update, but I deflected each question with vague non-answers. None of it was the kind of thing people could understand even if I explained, and I honestly wasn't sure how I'd put it into words anyway.
For now, letting it slide was the right move. Nutri seemed to want exactly that, too.
As for Yena, she'd come back stronger than ever. In the ranked matches she ran as a test, she flattened her opponents in a single stroke. She was wearing Mythic-grade equipment now — at this rate, she'd climb into the single digits before long.
"You won. This time, too."
And as for me...
BLUE TEAM — WIN!
Challenger 1,152 Points → Challenger 1,153 Points
Acquired 20 Honor.
Win Streak Bonus! Acquired 50 Honor.
Rank increased. 38th → 37th
161 matches. 161 wins. 0 losses.
I'd climbed all the way to 37th without dropping a single match. Points barely trickled in once you reached Master, so I'd crawled up in slivers, squeezing in victories whenever I found spare time — but win, win, and win again, and you end up here. It was maddening, really. Even a win only earned me one or two points.
I returned from the battlefield to the ranked waiting room. Ideally I'd have climbed a little higher, but Challengers only get matched against other Challengers and Masters, so it takes an eternity for a match to pop. Even if I sat in queue for hours a day, five matches was the hard ceiling.
My heart wanted to just summon rankers like Yena or Leo and fight them directly, but once two users have been matched, they can't face each other again for a set period. Besides, that would count as queue abuse.
"I should call it for today. I doubt anything else will pop anyway."
Something I learned only after reaching Master myself: from that tier upward, there are apparently a lot of players — so-called "parked" accounts — who stop playing PVP altogether once they've been placed in the tier. All the way up until now, I'd only ever faced opponents in my own tier, but from Master on, you can be matched against the tier above: Challengers.
What were the odds of a freshly promoted Master beating a Challenger? Anyone who climbs to Master has decent gear and decent skills, sure — but beating a "High Ranker" inside the top 100? Not happening.
And God forbid they ran into a ranker like Leo, someone capable of erasing an entire nation off the map...
Not a chance in hell.
So rather than risk a humiliating demotion back to Diamond, they tuck themselves away in Master, running a match or two now and then and quietly living out their days.
As I sized up the moment to end the stream, I checked the date.
"It's almost July."
July. The season when the heat starts pressing down.
Nearly five months had passed since I came back, and plenty had happened in that time. But I had a feeling far more was still to come — especially for DeoEn.
July was the month that carried not one but two massive content events.
DCK. Short for Devil of Angel Champions Korea — DeoEn's professional league in Korea.
Pros were all formidable players, but being a pro didn't necessarily mean sitting at the very top of the rankings. Right off the bat, the single-digit rankers — Sword God, Leo, Vlack, and the like — weren't pros, and plenty of other high rankers never pursued the pro life at all. Some people thus asked, "Is this tournament really a 'pro' tournament?" — and they weren't entirely wrong.
That said, high rankers like Choco at Rank 4 or Raphael of the Angel Guild did compete in the pro scene, and these players operated as teams. Theirs wasn't a contest of individuals but of coordinated harmony, so raw ranked performance alone couldn't measure their true strength. Team battles balanced each side against the other, which meant individual power never guaranteed victory.
Of course, Leo and Sword God are exceptions.
I'd never crossed swords with Sword God myself, but if he truly was stronger than Leo, then team fights would be meaningless in the first place. At Leo's level, she could win nearly any match fighting a whole team single-handedly.
"Anyway."
Truth be told, DCK itself didn't interest me much. I wouldn't mind catching one of Choco's matches at some point, but right now, Siege Warfare pulled at me far more. And if it's a siege fought over a castle, then surely...
Ring!