The Root of the Problem
The first set of the 21Round Big Match has concluded with a victory for the Mir Guild. Hello, this is Kang Soo-ji from the analysis desk. For today’s highly anticipated Big Match, we’ve brought in some truly special panelists. The GOAT of our idol hunter world! It’s Zen-nim!”
“Hahaha!! Hello everyone. Passion is the future! This is Zen.”
“I’d love to do a proper talk show, but this match is just way, way, waaay too exciting. Shall we jump straight into the game analysis, Zen-nim?”
“Absolutely! I could barely sit still the entire time. The proposition that was considered impossible—‘no engagement for 15 minutes’—was proven possible through Lee Hye-jung’s play. It’s an incredibly fresh perspective.”
“Let’s talk while we watch the footage.”
The screen showed the jungle in the very early game, hazy like green fog.
Inside it, Lee Hye-jung was relentlessly harassing the Seven Star Sword Bi-yeon. Even after Bi-yeon used her signature ‘Seven Star Sword,’ she still couldn’t shake Lee Hye-jung off.
If one word could describe that scene, it would be this.
Desperation.
Yes, you’re stronger than me. You stand on a far higher place. So what? What are you going to do about it? I’ll do everything I possibly can. Lee Hye-jung had clung to Bi-yeon with truly desperate tenacity.
Giving it your all is always beautiful.
Zen genuinely applauded Lee Hye-jung.
“She’s truly magnificent. Outstanding! That desperation! That desperate look! That’s what a hunter is! That’s what the league is about! I believe that kind of fighting spirit is the most important virtue a hunter can have.”
“Both junglers only managed to regroup after the seven-minute mark, right?”
“This is probably the first time in this year’s league that both junglers fought so relentlessly. It’s an absolutely incredible dogfight. And that moment where she caught Bi-yeon’s ankle as she tried to retreat for the fifth time! Just watching it again gives me chills. Hoo~! Delicious!”
“It really is. When they were tangled up and she bit her ear, I actually teared up a little myself.”
“The evaluation of Hunter Lee Hye-jung is going to completely change after this match. I guarantee it.”
The roles and weight carried by Lee Hye-jung and Bi-yeon in their respective guilds were completely different. In the extreme, even if Lee Hye-jung accomplished nothing, she could still somehow scrape together one person’s worth of value with her poison.
On the other hand, Bi-yeon was the core of the White Snake Guild. She wasn’t expected to do one person’s worth—she had to do two, even three.
The conclusion was simple. The longer the two of them wasted time rolling around together, the more advantageous it was for Lee Hye-jung.
If they couldn’t secure the buffs from killing monsters, couldn’t find the right timing to take objectives and remove their team’s debuffs, then the rest… well, the result spoke for itself.
Of course, this was only possible because—
“We mustn’t forget the team movement here. Look at this, this, and this. What do you notice about each laner’s positioning?”
“Oh, is it just me, or does everyone seem to be leaning toward the jungle?”
“It’s not just you. It was perfectly intentional. They were positioning themselves so they could immediately join if Hunter Lee Hye-jung got into danger.”
It wasn’t that there had been no dangerous moments.
There was clearly a gap between Lee Hye-jung and Bi-yeon, and to make up for it, each laner had to keep an eye on the jungle no matter what.
And the one who shone brightest in that process was, of course, the monster living in mid lane—Park Su-bin.
“Park Su-bin is… insane. When he defends, he’s an iron wall. When he attacks, he’s a giant. If I may be so bold, that coat looked pretty cool. I think I need to buy one after this match.”
“Pfft. Speaking of which, the second condition Lee Shin mentioned—‘secure one major objective within 15 minutes’—also came from Park Su-bin’s hands, didn’t it?”
“More precisely, it was the fantastic synergy between Park Su-bin and the Mountain King. Look at this. Isn’t it amazing?”
“Wow… that came out perfectly.”
“Whoever edited this, give them a raise right now!”
In the split-screen footage, Park Su-bin and the Mountain King looked toward each other at exactly the same moment.
Even though they were physically too far apart to see each other, the scene of them clearly recognizing one another was nothing short of a masterpiece.
Soon after, the Mountain King’s mouth seemed to twitch.
Park Su-bin extended the milky-white giant’s arm, while the Mountain King flipped the earth itself. As if they had made a promise, they revealed their presence and pushed their opponents back.
And then—
“This is the key moment! Now the two of them are heading for the objective!!”
A gamble where mid and support, not the jungler, took the major objective.
The Soul buff completed by taking four major objectives was powerful enough to flip the direction of the match. Normally, teams would fight a team battle at the river to secure it, but—
Thanks to the major objective ‘Black Tortoise’ that was stolen right under their noses at a critical timing, the White Snake Guild’s desired team fight timing was delayed once again.
“What we need to pay attention to here is the distance from Seven Star Sword Bi-yeon. Where is Bi-yeon right now?”
“She’s at top… ah…!!”
“You’re thinking correctly. Looking at the previous movements, Hunter Lee Hye-jung dragged Seven Star Sword Bi-yeon all the way to top lane. And the one who kept her pinned there was Hunter Park Jeong-seok.”
“So it wasn’t a momentary whim or individual decision. It was a calculated team movement.”
“One hundred percent.”
Avoid engagement within 15 minutes.
Secure one major objective within 15 minutes.
Two of the three victory conditions Lee Shin had mentioned were already fulfilled. In reality, the game had ended at that point.
“The Mir Guild has beautifully wrapped up the first set! Meanwhile, the White Snake Guild got off to a rather disappointing start! I wonder how the second set will go.”
“How will it go? What do you mean, how will it go.”
In the VVIP exclusive area, Lee Shin clinked his beer can against Chae Dong-ha’s while leisurely enjoying the match.
“Obviously they can’t stop it.”
“Is that so?”
“Why, does it look to you like that can be easily fixed?”
“Hmm… at first glance, yes.”
Chae Dong-ha tilted his beer glass, organized his thoughts for a moment, then answered.
“I don’t know about anything else, but just looking at the first set, it looked more like an accident to me.”
“They couldn’t respond to the unexpected move?”
“You saw how flustered they were. Who would have expected Hunter Lee Hye-jung—who everyone assumed would play it safe—to charge in aggressively from the very beginning against Bi-yeon?”
As vice-leader, he wanted to applaud Lee Hye-jung’s desperate struggle, but the gap between Lee Hye-jung and Seven Star Sword Bi-yeon was far larger than what met the eye for him to consider that a display of pure skill.
And the countermeasure was also too obvious.
“Let’s look at the fundamentals. Why was Bi-yeon so helpless despite the overwhelming difference in skill? Because she didn’t know. Not knowing was fatal. So now that they’ve experienced it once, they’ll be cautious. If there are no more sudden early-game situations, then the chance that Hunter Lee Hye-jung wins is… well, there is one, right?”
“So without the surprise strategy, there’s no way to win.”
“Well, yeah.”
Lee Shin nodded.
It wasn’t wrong.
Probably every stakeholder, expert, and even the spectators visible through the window or the viewers spamming chat all thought the same thing.
This was an accident. A fluke.
“…Is that really the case?”
“!!”
Chae Dong-ha’s eyes widened in surprise at those words as he looked at Lee Shin, who was sitting beside him.
“Heh. Heh. Heh…”
For the first time in a while, Lee Shin had his arms crossed and was covering his face—the so-called ‘dark mastermind male lead’ pose.
And in the middle of it, that staccato laugh. So annoying…
“Since you brought up the word ‘fundamentals,’ let’s look at it from the fundamentals. Where did this problem start? Was it really because of the unexpected situation?”
“What do you mean by that…”
“I told you to dig deeper into the fundamentals. Don’t look at the forest—look at the trees.”
“……??”
“I thought you’d grown a lot, but you still have a long way to go.”
Can’t be helped. I’ll give you a hint.
Lee Shin said as he pointed a finger forward.
“What am I best at?”
“…Well, obviously your dirty tricks?”
“Hmm, that’s not entirely wrong, but there’s an even more absolute domain. This is the one area where I’m the best. Oh, and don’t say charm. I know my own charm.”
“……Hmm.”
An absolute domain…
“Discovery? Training? I think it’s your eye for hunters.”
“That’s right! Correct.”
With access to the Status Window and having seen the endings of every existing character, Lee Shin’s insight was an unrivaled domain that no expert in this world could even begin to compete with.
“Hyung, I’m very good at understanding my role. People who understand their role well know how to actively utilize their strengths.”
“What does that have to do with strategy… why…?”
“Insight and strategy. Doesn’t that give you a feeling?”
“……??”
“Last hint. Every strategy I make is built on the foundation of characters—that is, the opposing hunters.”
“……??”
In that instant, lightning struck.
Information rapidly assembled inside Chae Dong-ha’s head.
Lee Shin, who possessed an eye good enough to discover Park Su-bin and Yu Ri-ra, and who knew suspiciously too much about hunters, combined together.
No way??
Chae Dong-ha’s eyes widened to their limit.
Lee Shin smiled as if to say ‘you’re thinking exactly what I intended.’
“That’s right. From the very beginning, I built the strategy with the sole purpose of targeting ‘Seven Star Sword Bi-yeon.’ Do you really think I didn’t consider what the other side would do next?”
“……Crazy.”
In the first place, strategy wasn’t Lee Shin’s strongest area.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it if he tried, but the strategies he had learned were all thoroughly through the GM interface.
What that meant was that the strategies he had used were ‘games’ conducted based on thoroughly logical data in a 2D world.
This was unmistakably ‘reality,’ and Lee Shin’s in-game strategies had a very high chance of producing errors here.
That was why he understood his role well and chose the field he was most confident in rather than a strategy that might contain even the slightest error.
That field was characters.
At the very least, characters weren’t any different from the game.
“Since when…?!”
“From the beginning. If I had to pinpoint it, probably from the moment I revealed the three weaknesses.
If you were to describe the character Seven Star Sword Bi-yeon in one word, it would be ‘second-in-command.’ In one sentence, ‘the eternal second-in-command who can never become number one.’
The character Bi-yeon is incredibly excellent.
Her potential is 193.
It’s close, but she’s S-rank, and with the mid-early game dominance trait ‘Seven Star Sword,’ she becomes a powerful blow in mid-early game focused concepts.
But what did I say earlier?
This character is the eternal second-in-command who can never become number one.
Bi-yeon’s ‘Desire for Improvement’ and ‘Warrior Who Knows No Satisfaction’ traits tremendously help her early-game growth, but they also change her character disposition to be arrogant and aggressive.
“……‘Do not engage within 15 minutes’ makes Bi-yeon obsess over fighting, and ‘secure one objective within 15 minutes’ makes Bi-yeon even more impatient.”
“As for the last 40 minutes? That’s just a fact. Bi-yeon is a mid-early game character. By the late game around 40 minutes, her power will have already run out, so there’s no need to worry about her.”
By Lee Shin mentioning it, Bi-yeon’s attention would naturally be drawn there.
It was obvious even without looking. She probably sat in a lotus position like a dramatic cutscene from her character profile, pretending to be calm… but in the end, the character Bi-yeon would deny her own shortcomings until the very last moment.
Therefore—
“As long as Bi-yeon remains the core, this problem can never be solved.”
This was why Bi-yeon could never become the core of a first-tier guild.
And this was also why Lee Shin was certain that even if he knew, he couldn’t do anything about it.
“You know ‘WeWereNotWrong,’ right?”
“……?!”
We were not wrong.
“Watch carefully. It’ll be the same in the second set too.”
─ “What the hell is this?! Why is this happening again?!”
─ “The thick poisonous fog spreading across the canyon! It’s progressing almost identically to the first set!!”