The Forum Explodes Over the Unmasking of the Fox-Eared Heroine
On the Forum — the largest Al Fantasia community in Korea — countless posts went up every single day.
Most of them, of course, were idle chatter and gossip. Guides, efficiency write-ups, anything resembling useful information had long since stopped appearing. The game had some years on it by now. That was simply how these things went.
Al Fantasia was in its eighth year. There had never been a single official patch since the servers opened; the only changes that ever came were the ones players made themselves. Under a structure like that, the drought of new guides was only natural. The popular skills everyone actually used had already been mapped, theorycrafted, and posted. The class-specific ones too. Not every skill, of course — rare upper-tier magic, abilities locked behind obscure routes, that kind of precious information never made it up. If even that got shared, there would be no such thing as a high ranker.
And so, through that long process, this enormous community had ceased to be a vault of information and become a place to talk. That shift was already old news. It had briefly remembered its original purpose half a year ago, when the underwater city was discovered — but by now that heat had long since gone cold.
Then something happened that set the Forum buzzing all over again.
It started with a single post.
The post Cheon Ho-jin had uploaded under DefenseIsInSeason spread far faster than Choco had expected. She had figured it might trend for a little while. She had not figured on this.
The title was the first problem.
Master of Overcoming was one of the major titles in the game, which meant the conditions for earning it had been public knowledge for a long time. Public knowledge, however, was not the same as something just anyone could pull off — so the outrage was only natural. The requirement was that a player had to accomplish something that, by player standards, was close to impossible. The condition was so vague that people who tried for it failed constantly. And this guy was claiming he had picked it up in the process of clearing a Kobold colony. Of course the replies came in hot.
The second problem was the party.
Even through the black bars — the kind of crude redaction you slapped on a criminal's face — the beauty underneath was obvious, and that was what most of the Forum latched onto. The bit where the shortest girl was punching him took off especially hard. Someone had already turned it into a drawing, and the thing was circulating with genuine cult energy, helped along by how much it looked like that old meme of an elementary schooler winding up a fist.
Of course, it was not only the photos. The contents of the post itself were getting just as much heat.
Reply after reply piled up, and in no time at all the post Cheon Ho-jin had thrown up became the hottest potato on the Forum.
And Hwangbo Yeon, staring at that post, went pale and muttered under her breath.
"What is this…"
The write-up itself barely registered. She could tell, at least, that Ho-jin had kept his promise and minimized any mention of Choco. The problem was the photos.
Her own face, awkwardly throwing up a V-sign, with a thick black bar slashed across her eyes. The kind of mosaic that made you think of a criminal. Yeon pressed a hand to her forehead and let out a pained breath.
She had been standing right there. She had heard every word of Choco's instructions and watched Ho-jin follow them. She knew he had not posted those pictures to make fun of anyone — that he had genuinely, sincerely, been trying to protect their identities.
But this is just… so tactless…!
If he was going to censor them, he could have blurred the faces. He could have slapped a big solid rectangle over them. That he had, out of every option in the world, picked the exact style used to hide a criminal's identity was a kind of talent all by itself.
Maybe she should send him a message and tell him to fix the photos. Fortunately, Forum IDs were linked to Al Fantasia accounts, so messaging him would not be hard.
She was just about to start tapping at the virtual keyboard floating in front of her when a notification popped up. A new post had been uploaded. The author was DefenseIsInSeason — Ho-jin, the exact person she had been about to message.
"Se-jin unni must have sent it first."
Choco was out of the question, and Yeon herself had been a second away from hitting send — which left only one other party member. Of course it was Se-jin.
I really can't count on anyone but Se-jin unni. A weight lifted off Yeon's chest, and she started browsing the comments under Ho-jin's apology.
"'Before'… so something like this has happened already?"
Curiosity flickered for a moment. Then she shook her head and let it go. Judging by the comments, it had not been a pleasant episode, and there was no real reason to go digging. Besides, it felt a little too much like stalking. Yeon pushed the thought aside and went looking at other posts.
As time passed, the bait Ho-jin's post had thrown out began to cool, the apology serving as a kind of turning point. After a few mutations it drifted, as these things did, into stories about Al Fantasia's past. The Forum had wrung those stories dry a hundred times over — but for Yeon, who had only just started the game, they were genuinely fascinating.
The hidden fortress in the great underground cavern. The ancient demon Mesophis, waking from its sleep. The Thunderbird that called down lightning. Stories of the rankers.
Time ran like water. Was this the magic of a community?
Yeon was still clicking dully through to the next post when she happened to glance at the clock, and she startled so hard she almost shouted.
"It's already this late?"
More than half a day had passed since her exam ended. She had been sure it had only been an hour or two. She stared, wide-eyed, and murmured to herself.
So that's why Choco told me not to go in there.
A place that ate time like this — of course you would tell someone to stay out. Choco's actual reasons had been nothing of the sort, but Yeon squeezed her eyes shut and closed the Forum anyway. She had just finished the stories of ranks ten through two and was right in the middle of rank one, which made it a little painful to stop — but this was the kind of thing you had to quit the moment the thought occurred to you.
I'll go to bed early and log in first thing.
Yeon logged out of virtual reality and fell asleep right there in the Cocoon.
True to the promise she had made herself before falling asleep, Yeon logged into Al Fantasia the instant she woke — and then tilted her head.
She had logged out lying in bed. Waking up in bed should have been the only possible outcome. Instead, she had opened her eyes outside the door. Wondering if something had gone wrong, she yanked the door open and hurried into the room.
"Choco? Is something—"
"Ah… Yeon. Thou hast come."
"Uh. Yeah. I did, but…"
Yeon looked from Choco — dripping with sweat, eyes darting anywhere but at her — to Tara, who sat across from her as if nothing in the world were amiss. Her voice came out puzzled.
"…What is that outfit?"
Crimson and white, in careful harmony. Something very like a shrine maiden's robes from the neighboring country. Choco's head dropped toward her chest. Her face had gone so scarlet that Yeon could have sworn she saw steam rising off it.