Day 26: The 98% Problem
“Aaaaargh—!”
Bang!
A man slammed his fist onto the desk and flew into a pure, frothing rage.
“You goddamn cheater bastard!”
The monitor in front of him showed Valorant, the word Defeat stamped across the screen in enormous letters.
“Fuck, why the hell isn’t Riot banning that cheater already?!”
He simply could not understand it. The player he had just faced in Valorant boasted a win rate of 98.05 percent. And not in some casual lobby—this was Immortal tier, the so-called heavenly realm!
No, wait. With that last victory the opponent had just reached Valorant’s absolute highest rank: Mythic. Was that even possible?
Common sense said that maintaining that kind of win rate in the heavenly realm was impossible without cheats. Hell, he honestly doubted even cheats could produce those numbers and that tier.
“Fuck… I’m done for.”
His eyes blazed as he muttered under his breath. He couldn’t leave it like this. There was no way he was going to let that cheater walk free. With that thought burning in his skull, his hands flew across the keyboard.
“I’m making this public.”
“Hmm.”
Cheon Seo-ah furrowed her brow and let out a low, dissatisfied hum. Something was wrong. Something had gone very strange.
She had first noticed the oddity two days ago. That day, as always, she had queued into Valorant—yet from a certain point onward the game simply refused to start. The moment a match was found, someone always, without fail, dodged the lobby. Thanks to that, the number of games she had actually managed to play over the past two days could be counted on one hand.
At first she had simply assumed people were just mis-clicking queue…
“Is this what they call sniping?”
She tilted her head and murmured to herself. But who on earth would snipe her, and why? She wasn’t a pro player. She wasn’t even a streamer.
And so she sat there, staring holes through the Valorant client as yet another lobby exploded the instant it formed—
“Is something the matter, Miss?”
Her door cracked open with careful caution, and Kang Min-ho peeked his head inside. Unconcealable fear flickered in his eyes. For the past two days an oppressive presence had been leaking through the firmly shut door of her room. At first it had been faint enough that even he had to focus to sense it. Lately, however, that presence had swollen in size until it felt ready to detonate at the slightest touch.
“It’s nothing important.”
Seo-ah answered the question that came from behind her. Even so, Kang Min-ho could not wipe the anxiety from his face. The eerie presence pouring off her had grown denser still. If left alone, it felt as though something catastrophic was going to happen.
He swallowed hard, then mustered his courage and spoke again.
“If anything is inconveniencing you, please tell me. I’m here precisely to look after your comfort, after all.”
“Hmm.”
Seo-ah considered for a moment, then nodded. Certainly, rather than fretting over this alone, getting help from someone else might be the better way to resolve the situation.
Having sorted her thoughts, she said:
“I can’t play the game.”
“What do you mean by that…?”
“Exactly what I said. The lobby blows up the second it’s made, so I haven’t been able to play properly lately.”
…
Kang Min-ho’s expression hardened into stone. At the same time he muttered inwardly:
Ha, fuck. It finally happened.
To be completely honest, he already knew exactly why she couldn’t play. How could he not? He had been a gamer in his younger days, too. Cheon Seo-ah’s Valorant nickname was already infamous—a monster among monsters who had carved out a 98.05 percent win rate in Mythic, the highest of the high heavens.
The problem was that public opinion no longer regarded her as “an overwhelmingly skilled monster.” She was simply “a cheater.”
Couldn’t you have gone a little easier…?
Frankly, if he himself landed on the enemy team against her, he would dodge too. Teammates got a free win for doing nothing; enemies were guaranteed a loss every single time. The only reason her win rate wasn’t a perfect 100 percent was the losses from when she had first started ranked—mistakes born of unfamiliarity with the game, not true mistakes.
Even so…
How the hell am I supposed to say that to her face?
Kang Min-ho’s brow furrowed. He could not bring himself to bluntly tell her, “Miss, you’ve been branded a cheater, so no one will play with you.” No—he was afraid to say it. He had no idea what kind of reaction she would have once she heard those words.
And so he was still desperately pretending to “think of a reason” when—
“K-Kang Min-ho!”
Crash—!
The front door flew open and Shin Dae-jin burst in, face frantic. A question mark popped into Kang Min-ho’s eyes. Why was this guy here? Hadn’t he said he was off today and going out to play?
While Kang Min-ho was still thinking that…
“Ah—Miss.”
Shin Dae-jin finally noticed Seo-ah was present, panicked, and bowed deeply. Seo-ah gave him a casual little wave in return.
“You two can go now. I’m going to try queueing again.”
“Understood. I’ll do my utmost to find the reason as well.”
With that the conversation ended. The moment the door to Seo-ah’s room shut firmly behind them, Kang Min-ho spun on Shin Dae-jin.
“What’s going on?”
“A problem… a problem just exploded.”
“Problem?”
Kang Min-ho scowled at the incoherent answer.
“Explain so a person can understand…!”
“Shut up and look at this!”
Shin Dae-jin shouted and shoved his smartphone in Kang Min-ho’s face. On the screen sat a community post.
“Ha, fuck. Of course. I knew it.”
Kang Min-ho muttered. The post on Shin Dae-jin’s phone was a targeted call-out. And the specific individual being sniped was none other than Cheon Seo-ah. Even through the screen the raw fury and malice were palpable. It was a lengthy wall of text, but boiled down to its essence it said this:
That cheater bastard is polluting Valorant. Riot, permanently ban that cheater’s account right this second.
“The person this guy is sniping… it’s definitely the Miss, right?”
Kang Min-ho nodded at Shin Dae-jin’s question. Ten out of ten, a hundred out of a hundred—it was her. Especially with the phrase “98 percent win rate” sprinkled throughout the enraged wall of text.
“What do we do?”
Shin Dae-jin’s voice had gone heavy. The post already had over a thousand comments. Worse, it was spreading across countless communities; the discourse had moved past simple insults into outright calls for her death. At this rate, even Chilgeomje himself would have trouble putting out the fire.
And yet, if they told Seo-ah the truth…
“I’m scared.”
“Same.”
Kang Min-ho nodded at the murmur. Right now she was so irritated she looked ready to explode at the lightest touch. Telling her about this call-out post in that state would be like fanning a house fire—no, like dumping gasoline on it.
In the end…
“We report to Master, right?”
“We have to. This isn’t something we can handle.”
Haaah—
Shin Dae-jin and Kang Min-ho finished the conversation and both let out deep, heavy sighs.
Bang—!
“These maggot bastards!”
Nine villains sat around an enormous round table. Among them, Hyeolrangje—famous for having the shortest fuse of the lot—slammed the table and exploded with rage. He was far from alone, however. The other eight villains kept their faces carefully composed, yet inside every one of them boiled with the same fury.
“Calm yourself. First we must decide how to handle this situation.”
“Just kill every last one of them!”
“The problem is that the Young Lady does not want that. And that call-out post has already spread beyond Korea into overseas communities. By the most conservative estimate, at least a million maggots are insulting her right now. Do you seriously think we can hunt down and kill every single one of them?”
Urgh…
At the Proxy’s sharp rebuke, Hyeolrangje groaned and dropped back into his seat.
“So what do you suggest we do?”
“Is that not precisely why we gathered here?”
This time Maraseung spoke. He sat with his palms pressed together and his eyes closed. At a glance he looked like a merciful high monk, yet everyone present knew the truth: that posture meant he was barely containing the murderous rage boiling inside him.
“But seriously—why the hell didn’t Chilgeomje do anything until it got this bad?”
Hyeolrangje turned his ire on Chilgeomje. And he was not alone; several of the villains privately believed the entire mess stemmed from Chilgeomje’s mismanagement. After all, the call-out post that started everything had originated on a Korean community—and Korea was Chilgeomje’s territory.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. So I’m supposed to stare at the internet twenty-four hours a day?”
“You were the one who volunteered to serve the Young Lady first! That means you should have nipped this in the bud before it ever happened!”
Chilgeomje and Hyeolrangje’s voices rose higher and higher. It went beyond raised voices—
Grrrr…
Hyeolrangje’s form shifted into his half-man, half-wolf beast state, a low growl rumbling from his throat.
Shiiing—
Chilgeomje drew the seven blades at his back—the Seven Desires Swords—ready to swing at any moment.
The tension between them had climbed so high that a fight could break out at any second when—
“Everyone, be silent.”
Thud—
A calm yet beautiful voice rolled across the table. Instantly Hyeolrangje’s growling, Chilgeomje’s drawn blades, and the gazes of every other villain snapped toward Geomma.
“Isn’t this a simple problem?”
She looked around at them as though she genuinely could not understand why they were struggling. A simple problem? This? Public opinion insulting the Young Lady was still spreading this very moment, and she called it simple? Had she completely lost her mind?
Under their stares, Geomma gave a small, amused smile.
“It’s simple. We just have to prove that the win rate the Young Lady built is not from cheats.”
“And how exactly do we do that?”
“Internet streaming.”
…!
At the casual words that dropped from her lips, the other eight villains’ eyes went wide. Why hadn’t they thought of that? If they used a real-time livestream, they could silence the cheater narrative in a single stroke. No—more than silence it; they could reverse the entire tide of public opinion.
At the same time, a triumphant smile curved Geomma’s lips, mixed with open mockery for the eight who had failed to think of something so elementary.