The F2P Alt

People cheered as the monsters fell back, but my mind was somewhere else entirely.

This… no matter how I look at it, this is that, isn't it?

The status window hanging in front of my eyes was painfully familiar. Of course it was. I'd seen the damn thing dozens of times a day in a mobile game played by over two hundred million people worldwide — the same game where I sat as a ranked player.

Fairy Masters.

More than anything, the name sitting in that name field — Gibung-i — told me exactly whose status screen this was.

Gibung-i. That was the handle I used in Fairy Masters.

Wait. What? So I died and got dumped inside Fairy Masters?

A hollow laugh slipped out of me. What was this, some kind of novel plot?

Just in case, I lifted a hand and tapped the Strength field. A new window bloomed in front of my face.

"…No."

The window vanished the instant I refused. I poked the rest of the stats in order, and the same prompt appeared and disappeared, over and over.

"Have I been playing too many games?"

My head throbbed at something so far beyond common sense I didn't know where to put it. How the hell was I supposed to process this?

Alright. Let's say this world really is the setting of Fairy Masters.

That wasn't bad. No — that was actually great.

I was a ranked player in Fairy Masters. Twentieth in Korea. Four hundred and thirtieth in the world. Those were insane numbers.

If this world really was Fairy Masters, a red carpet had just been rolled out at my feet. I knew the story, the strategies, the meta — damn near everything there was to know.

There was just one problem.

Why the hell did it have to be the alt?!

The status window in front of me belonged to a brand-new account I'd cooked up on the bus, barely minutes before I died.

I had two other accounts besides this one. My main had two years and north of fifty thousand dollars poured into it. The other alt was F2P, but even that had a year and a half of playtime behind it.

The player characters on those accounts were an 8-Star on the main and a 4-Star on the alt.

Not this one-star piece of trash!

No way.

An absurd thought crawled into my head. What if I hadn't made this alt right before I died? What if I'd logged into my main instead?

My status window probably wouldn't look this pathetic.

What is this feeling? Nothing's even confirmed and I already feel like I took a loss. Like watching a coin I all-in'd crash straight to zero!

Why the hell had I made an alt at that moment? If I could meet the me from right before I died, I'd punch him in the face and make him log into the main.

No. Scratch that. I'd just break his legs so he couldn't get on that damn bus in the first place.

Haa… whatever. It's not like I can go back and log into the main now. Drop it.

Brooding over it wouldn't help a damn thing. What I needed to do now was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠confirm whether this world really was the setting of Fairy Masters.

Ah. So that's why my eye level feels different.

In reality — no, in my "previous life" — I'd been an average office worker at five-foot-eight. Standard male height. Now it was different. Being a player character, I was a good four inches taller.

Anyway…

"Hey! Can't you hear me? Get over here already!"

"Huh?"

A high, buzzing voice drilled into my ear. Was there a mosquito around?

"You not going home? Hurry up and follow me!"

I turned my head. A guy with a baby face that looked like a middle ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠schooler's was glaring at me, clearly pissed. He was tiny, too. Barely five-three, five-four?

"Since when do we know each other well enough for you to talk to me like—"

But unlike his baby face, what he was holding was anything but childish. A blood-soaked axe hung from his hand, still dripping.

It was the kind of axe that automatically made a man polite.

"Do I… know you?"

"What? Is this guy insane? How the hell would I know you? Quit the bullshit and follow me!"

He spun on his heel and walked off.

Ah, this little shit…

I wanted nothing more than to smack him in the back of the head, but then my body would get split clean in half by that blood-caked axe. Grumbling inwardly, I followed after him.

How do I get rid of this? Oh. It's gone.

Fortunately, the status window floating in front of me vanished in an instant. Apparently it disappeared if I just willed it to. Convenient in more ways than one.

The place the axe-wielding brat led me to already had a crowd gathered. I must have been the last one there, because the looks I got weren't friendly.

"Everyone's here. We return to Indigo! You did well holding off the monsters. My servants and Princess Lily's will come to collect the bodies. And congratulations on surviving."

The man in armor said as much and turned. Two strikingly attractive women followed behind him — the kind of women who had no business being on a battlefield.

Damn. They're stunning.

Their outfits were extremely revealing. The woman on the left had long, sleek legs on full display. The one on the right wore pants so tight they might as well have been painted on. Beauties you didn't see every day back in Korea.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Wait. Could they be…

The two women were chatting up the man in front with voices dripping with affection. That told me everything I needed to know about who they were.

A Master and his Fairies?

Fairy Masters had one absolute rule.

Pick a male player character and you summoned female Fairies. Pick a female player character and you summoned male Fairies. Players had begged the devs to let them pull Fairies of the other gender. The rule never budged. It was ironclad.

If I check their status windows, I should know for sure… huh?

The moment I thought I wanted to see those three's status windows, screens similar to mine — but not quite the same — stacked up in front of my eyes.

"Oh, fuck."

The curse slipped out before I could stop it. And that particular curse was one of pure joy.

In Fairy Masters, you couldn't check another player's Fairy specs unless they chose to show them. Here, it was different. I could see other Masters' status windows. Hell, I could see the Fairies' too.

For someone stuck at a measly 1-Star, that was the best news I could have asked for. It meant I could read an opponent's full strength before a real fight and cook up an efficient strategy.

I analyzed the status windows of the Master named Bison Trilly and his Fairies, Violet and Talia, as I followed the crowd.

And the conclusion I reached was…

Ugly as hell.

Not the worst I'd ever seen, but nothing good either. For one thing, the class composition didn't synergize at all. Bison Trilly was a Mage. His two Fairies were a Thief and a Healer. Nobody up front to tank.

On top of that, both Fairies were only 1-Star. Sure, they were way stronger than me — I was a 1-Star too — but through the eyes of a former Fairy Masters ranker, they were pathetically weak. Looking at their levels and class levels, I could roughly guess their stats at the moment they'd been summoned. Bison's Fairies weren't the kind you'd keep using into the late game.

Right. That Bison — or was it Dyson? — said they were heading back to Indigo.

If the Indigo Bison mentioned was the Indigo I knew, their weakness made perfect sense. Because Indigo was the stage for Chapters 1 and 2 of the Fairy Masters story. It was also the starting point for every new player.

Bison Trilly. Yeah. That was the name.

Once I started pulling up the Fairy Masters story in my head, Bison Trilly felt familiar too. Chapter 1 had two bosses. One of them was Bison Trilly.

In that case…

My gaze drifted naturally to the woman walking at the front alongside Bison.

I want to see her. I want to see her so badly I hate myself for it… no, wait. That's not it. I want to see that woman's status window.

The moment I thought I wanted to see her status window, the three previous screens vanished and a new one appeared.

Prisia Lily.

I nodded as I confirmed the name on the status window. She was the other Chapter 1 boss.

Huh?

…

Coincidence?

Prisia Lily suddenly looked back. Her gaze landed on me, dead-on. She stared at me with an unreadable expression, then turned forward again.

What was that?

She could have just glanced back because something felt off. But my gut was telling me she'd turned around specifically to look at me.

Piecing together the chatter around me, I realized the battle I'd just fought was a Monster Overflow event.

Monster Overflow wasn't an official event run by the game company. It was a world-setting event that triggered without warning. This world had monster habitats called Dungeons. When the number of monsters inside a Dungeon exceeded its capacity, every last one of them got dumped outside. Homeless in an instant, the monsters wandered until they found a human village or city to attack. Fairy Masters players called that a Monster Overflow.

Fairy Masters was a collector gacha that, for some unholy reason, also hard-gated Fairy growth. Summon a Fairy with gems and they'd come out at different rarities — but always locked at level 1.

Pull a so-called tier-1 Fairy and of course you want to see what she can do. Problem is, send a level-1 Fairy into combat and she dies in seconds. No matter how high the rarity, a level-1 Fairy's stats were garbage. They dropped dead almost immediately.

A dead Fairy could be used again, but her abilities took a hit. Stats dropped. Levels dropped. That kind of thing. So players researched ways to power-level freshly summoned Fairies as fast as possible. The result of that research was the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Monster Overflow.

You deliberately left a Dungeon uncleared to trigger an Overflow. When the monsters came pouring in, you sent out your level-1 Fairies. Unlike a Dungeon run, Overflows had no party-size limit. You could send your already-raised powerhouses along to mop up the monsters. The level-1 Fairies still counted as participating, so they soaked up shared EXP without needing to land a single kill. Explosive level-ups.

In other words, you were carrying them. A bus ride.

But it was a bad method in the long run. You didn't want to trigger Overflows too often. Levels mattered for Fairy growth, sure. What mattered more were Growth Stones.

Use a Growth Stone and you could raise a Fairy's stats without touching her level. They dropped at a thirty percent rate from Dungeon clears. The problem? Monsters from an Overflow event didn't drop Growth Stones at all.

That's why people called Fairy Masters an extreme resource-management game.

Too many Fairies to raise. Not nearly enough Growth Stones. Unless you were the kind of whale who dropped a few thousand dollars a month, managing those stones was mandatory.