Balance Collapse
It was the sort of line someone ought to have set down with care.
The users who lived on the community boards received the thread with something close to reverence, the way you receive a thing you always knew was coming.
Honestly, every one of the countless people camped there—whether they played Haven or not—could feel it. Lately, the mood had been a little off.
Of course, if you pushed the subject down into a real debate, it might be one not everyone could agree on. But they all knew. It was a thing that had to be said at least once.
Back when the 3-star SS special option appeared—and with it the skill-rank +1 option people suspected only a 5-star could roll—the reaction had been nothing like this.
Powerful, yes. But if you'd spent that kind of money and burned that kind of luck, fine. It was worth acknowledging. Disgustingly, stupidly broken, sure. Stop there, though. It wasn't as if the thing had no downsides at all. That was what most users had thought.
This time, a 4-star SS special option had surfaced. And not even a special option meant for 5-star classes in general, but one presumed to be exclusive to a single class. Past that, the users couldn't hold it in. Worse, the synergy that fired when it linked with the 3-star SS special option had swollen far beyond either effect on its own.
The video 440,000 people had watched live had, a full day later, already steamrolled the real-time, weekly, and monthly charts on the video platforms in a single day and broken forty million views. Not just Korea. The algorithm had carried it across the world.
Everyone knew it already. At the end of this blood-spattered argument waited a conclusion so foregone it was almost hollow.
The tactless T-types sprayed those facts across the community without so much as the sense to be afraid.
From the side that had to listen, it did sting. A hundred million to two billion won wasn't somebody's dog's name. Until Kim Siwoo showed up, a 4-star class had been the final choice an endgame user could make, and a 3-star SS had been regarded in much the same light as a 5-star class.
It was the opening of an endless war in which everyone only ever said their own piece—a pure waste of emotion. But burning that hot only meant it had been that intense. Another fuse had caught.
Kim Siwoo's.
And Lim Sarang's.
Meanwhile, the real ones—the ones actually doing the analysis—were busy reconstructing exactly what had happened in that moment.
The users looking at it coldly weren't afraid of the unrivaled ceiling of a 5-star class. A 5-star was supposed to be strong. That was the correct setting. But the synergy between 5-star classes—that had spat out a result nobody could have predicted.
Whatever the case, posts crying balance collapse still made up the largest share of the community. They had to shout it.
Not the potential of users sitting at endgame level, the current top of the ranker pile. This was the power of a Level 12 mage who had only just started the game and barely opened field-boss content. Lim Sarang, who had gone in with him, wasn't even wearing anything beyond basic gear.
Of course, shouting the same thing forever didn't bring anything back.
I went ahead and admitted it.
"I admit it."
"The balance has collapsed."
"It's strong. Way too strong."
"Yesterday, honestly, I kind of came. From the taste of Sarang's buff..."
"A fivefold explosion of attack power... I can't forget that taste."
"You think so? Anyway."
To anyone watching from the outside, it might feel like being robbed in comparison. That much, I had no choice but to admit. I could rewatch the clip as many times as I liked and my whole body still shook from how outrageous it was. And just as the community had said, things had somehow ended with me keeping Lim Sarang as my personal buffer, so a 5-star Dragon Words Mage's power had grown to double—more than double.
But that was as far as it went.
"It collapsed. So what."
"Isn't this that kind of game? It's why I started."
"If it displeases you, kindly draw a 5-star, roll every last option up through a 4-star SS special, and become strong! Did someone grab a knife and threaten you not to?!"
Turned into a serial gasp-murderer, I poured out every word I'd been itching to say, and it felt incredible. They were lines that had been tingling at my mouth for a while now, desperate to get out.
I wasn't using a bug. I wasn't exploiting a single thing. I had a line to Windy that could have let me, sure, but when it came to Haven she didn't help me with anything at all. The most I'd gotten was knowing about Root Classes a little earlier than everyone else. So I could say it. Cleanly. Because I had every right to stand there and say it.
"Is what I almost said."
"Aah, well. For every person out there who dislikes me, there are all of you, showing up to watch a nice refreshing whale stream."
"If I get nerfed, I'll just spend that much again."
"Just type 'fr lol.'"
Honestly, if this hadn't been a game Windy made, the anxiety would have kept me from sleeping. A character I'd raised with this much affection, nerfed overnight—even a little—because other people wouldn't stop screaming: how shredded would my heart be? I'd want to roll a protest truck straight up to headquarters.
But this was Haven. Another world, made by Windy. The classes already brought into being were characters granted unequal power so they could protect that world, their balance designed by an AI and locked down tight.
I wasn't worried. I'd already heard the answer, straight.
"Windy. If the Dragon Words Mage is so strong that the users boycott as a group, swear they're quitting the game, and protest for a nerf—would you nerf it?"
That was what she told me. Which was why I could laugh, reading the community.
"All right. Shall we head out and collapse the next bit of balance?"
I swallowed the words I wanted to howl—Go fuck yourselves, you pieces of shit!!1—and set off for the Magic Tower to learn my Level 11 skills.