This Is a Team Game
In the VIP viewing room, Lee Myeong-hwan shot to his feet after watching two straight losses.
Even a dog passing by on the street could tell the flow was ugly.
Especially that final team fight in the third set. Were these people or just wild animals…?
“Huu……”
Calm down. Calm down, Lee Myeong-hwan.
He stopped for a moment to steady his breathing, then headed down the stairs again.
In the end, the flow was what mattered.
The momentum had already swung completely over to Mir Guild, and Dynasty was collapsing at a frightening pace. If they started the next set in this state? The only scenes that played in Lee Myeong-hwan’s head were ones of defeat.
As the representative, he had to do something.
The one small mercy was that even in this hopeless situation, Lee Myeong-hwan was keeping a cool head, and he possessed enough wealth to lift the team’s shattered morale.
But that was it.
Unfortunately, the strategy team that needed to be the coldest of all right now was anything but cool.
“Goddamn it! What the fuck are you doing?!”
Lee Myeong-hwan froze with his hand on the doorknob at the crude outburst. The large group following him stopped at the same time.
He stared at the nameplate with suspicious eyes.
DYNASTY GUILD WAITING ROOM
It clearly said that. It was written there, yet…
“This isn’t even funny. After acting so arrogant, you get solo-killed, dove, and counter-ganked all over the place.”
“What did you just say?”
“What do you think? I’m just stating the facts! Two kills, five deaths, three assists. Metrics over wins? Metrics over wiiins~?”
“You son of a bitch!”
Was this middle-school-level bickering really happening inside his guild’s waiting room?
When he glanced back, the guild executives—including the leader—seemed to share the same thought; they kept checking their surroundings.
“You don’t actually think you’re better at the game than me, do you? Don’t delude yourself. Kim Yu-shin and I competed on a level you wouldn’t even dare look at!”
“……Are you finished?”
“The only reason you were given shot-calling duty was to lighten our burden. It’s not because your macro or game sense is better!”
“This bastard shat the bed in the first two sets…!!”
“Both of you, that’s enough.”
“Don’t order me around!”
“I can’t play with that brain-dead idiot!”
“Shut up, Jeon Jin-woong. You’re the same with your constant ‘I’m the only one trying’ and ‘I’m so great’ act.”
“What? The guy who spends all night at clubs and skips practice is talking about being great?”
“Yeah, that’s why you get countered every time. Honestly, isn’t it embarrassing to lose to Lee Hye-jung? That girl who only uses poison because her damage is trash?”
“You… you pieces of garbage!”
“……”
Before he knew it, Lee Myeong-hwan was standing alone in front of the door.
The rest? He had sent them away. It was too embarrassing to watch.
Lee Myeong-hwan had thought “money” was the answer to this crisis.
After all, unlike the maniac next door, he wasn’t particularly skilled at strategy or scouting hunters. His plan was to numb the sense of crisis drilled into their brains with a massive victory bonus.
It wasn’t a long-term solution. Just one day. They only had to hold on for today. In a short-term tournament, he believed there was no better method.
He had been debating the exact amount, but now, listening to the sounds of a physical brawl coming from that chaotic room, he wondered if money would even work.
Something felt fundamentally broken.
Until yesterday they had kept winning, riding a hot streak. Hope had been visible.
Why did it turn out like this?
He truly didn’t understand.
Every member was a Division One major hunter. Six of them were named players, and two were rankers standing at the very peak of the hunter world.
If you dropped them straight into League One, they would have been comfortably upper-tier.
Honestly, the only reason they didn’t receive more attention was because Mir Guild overshadowed them, but Dynasty’s current squad was arguably the strongest in League Two history.
Yet the team he had gathered looked like this.
Honestly, at this level, shouldn’t they be devouring League Two without breaking a sweat? What more can I possibly do here?
Lee Myeong-hwan felt wronged. He had done everything properly. He had granted every request.
What the hell was the problem?
Why are they doing this to me?!
“Everything. Every single thing is the problem.”
VIP viewing room.
Seeing Dynasty’s completely different appearance compared to the first set, Chae Dong-ha had asked a question, and Lee Shin was answering.
“Please explain it in a way I can understand. I can see that it’s a problem with my own eyes. What I want to know is what exactly is the problem.”
“Like I said, it’s everything. All of it.”
“……?!”
He wasn’t joking. In Lee Shin’s eyes, Dynasty had been problematic from beginning to end.
A guild that had lost its foundation.
The reckless recruitment of rankers.
And finally—
Lee Myeong-hwan.
“……You mean Dynasty representative Lee Myeong-hwan? Why is he showing up in this conversation?”
“Hehe, listen carefully. What I’m about to tell you will become blood and flesh for you later when you become guild leader.”
Dynasty’s missteps had begun at the start of this season.
After narrowly missing promotion and finishing second for two straight seasons, the fans were furious and the guild’s pride had been trampled into the dirt. So Dynasty made a choice.
The Super Team.
“……Isn’t a super team supposed to be a good thing?”
“Dong-ha, do you remember? Back when our guild was causing a huge stir before the transfer, what did I say?”
“……Foundation.”
“Exactly. Without foundation, it’s bound to collapse. So here’s the problem.”
A super team literally meant gathering aces and top hunters to create the best possible roster. The inevitable condition that came with it was that you had to completely overhaul the existing squad.
“You could ask, didn’t we overhaul ours too? True. But it’s different from what they did. We were in League Four, on the verge of death if we didn’t do something drastic.”
“That’s true.”
“Well, let’s say it’s the same and skip the lame excuses. The difference is we didn’t overhaul the front office. The leader is still Jeong Sun-dong.”
“Ah……?”
“Those guys announced it to the whole neighborhood. ‘Hey everyone! We’re throwing away our foundation to build a super team!’ We did it quietly.”
It hadn’t exactly been quiet, but they could overlook that much.
Still, they had cut out the rotten parts without making a fuss.
“That was the starting point. Dynasty is now Dynasty in name only. It’s basically a brand-new guild. So what’s the problem with a newborn guild?”
“Well… the system isn’t established yet.”
“Not wrong, but I prefer to put it like this.”
Center.
“A new guild without foundation has no center. If the center isn’t stable? The whole guild shakes violently. Lee Myeong-hwan must have realized this problem too. He’s not a complete idiot.”
Lee Myeong-hwan had solved it by turning the guild into a corporation.
Kill individual thought and enforce strict top-down obedience. A company that runs like perfectly meshed gears, just like the Ido Group.
Clap, clap, clap.
“Wow, excellent choice. He plugged the shaking center with a concrete slab called ‘company.’ If we take a quick detour—if they had reached today’s final round in that state—at least a childish strategy like today’s wouldn’t have worked.”
“……So that’s what you meant.”
Although Lee Shin had called it a detour, Chae Dong-ha had already reached the point Lee Shin was making.
“The mistake was recruiting the rankers on top of that! Right?”
Lee Shin grinned.
Correct, Dong-ha-mon.
“Rankers are game changers. They’re strategic weapons that alter the very nature of the strategy team. Yet they poured rankers into a squad whose foundation had already been ripped apart by the whole super-team idea? In the middle of the season? And two of them?!”
“Traffic control would have been impossible.”
“Want to hear something fun? So who is Dynasty’s strategy team leader right now?”
“Well……”
Was it Electro, the shot caller?
The self-assertive Ssaurabi?
Hwarang, who had the highest rank and was the most diligent?
Or one of the other starters who had been the center of their previous guilds before joining Dynasty?
Only then did Chae Dong-ha truly grasp how serious the situation was.
The fact that they couldn’t clearly name the strategy leader even after reaching the season’s final round—round fifty—proved just how much of a mess the team had become.
“So in a situation like this, who has to step up and organize traffic? The representative. He’s the one who gathered everyone, after all. The representative needs to coax them, soothe them, and sort things out, but……”
“……That’s not Representative Lee Myeong-hwan’s style.”
“On the other hand, what about me?”
“……You do it terrifyingly well.”
“Understand now? That’s the difference between me and Lee Myeong-hwan. That’s the difference between Mir Guild and Dynasty.”
The result was that lukewarm team made up of people who were friends of friends. And even then, it was a gathering of arrogant kids who each thought they were the best.
There was a message that appeared on the GM loading screen.
Trading is the fastest and surest way to increase your power… However, do not rely on it too heavily. A strategy team is far more sensitive and delicate than you think.
Beginners saw it as nothing more than common advice, but it wasn’t.
That was an actual setting.
Interactions within the strategy team that couldn’t be measured by stats alone.
And Lee Shin called it this.
Teamwork.
“Teamwork. Our strength, and—”
“Dynasty’s weakness as well.”
“Exactly. Teamwork.”
Why had Lee Shin sung that “family, family” song? The end of the league came down to teamwork. The sweat shed together, the friendship, and the love that bloomed from it!
Never forget.
This Guild War League is—
“A team game.”
Therefore, it was only natural that they would win this match.
“There’s no way my guild would lose to a bunch of ragtag misfits, right?”
On the screen, Kang Han-bi and Jeon Jin-woong were steadily being pushed back.
“Huu……”
Hwarang Kim Yu-shin had finally destroyed the bottom tower despite countless checks.
Yu Ri-ra stared at him with exhausted eyes.
“Wow… Handsome oppa is seriously hardcore. I admit it. Oppa has real charm.”
Throughout the fourth set, Hwarang had relentlessly executed side operations.
First in tower destruction across both teams and first in overall activity. He was truly a master of side lane pushing.
It was an asymmetric strategy that Mir Guild currently had no way to stop.
That was why they had given up on it until the third set and focused on the main force, but—
From the fourth set onward, things were different.
“Grandpa said that now we can win even a four-versus-four against their main force. I’m curious—what exactly happened during the break? Everyone looked like their souls had left their bodies.”
“……If only their souls had left, that would be fortunate.”
“Huh?? What did you say?”
“……”
Hwarang unintentionally grumbled. The situation was that bad. Because even at this very moment, all sorts of blame-shifting was pouring through the comms.
― “Just shut up and watch my back!!”
― “Take it slow and wait. Trust Sir Hwarang.”
― “Fuck! Are your ears stuffed with shit? Watch me!!”
― “……I will not be speaking with you.”
― “Anyway, there’s no one around, so should we push now?”
― “I told you to wait!”
It was exactly as Lee Shin had prophesied.
At some point Kang Han-bi had gone berserk and completely slipped out of control. Jeon Jin-woong, who was supposed to keep him in check, had given up entirely.
The others were the same. Each of them played their own game, trusting only in their individual skill.
If speaking power had been concentrated on one person, things might have unified even if it was ugly. But in the second set Kang Han-bi ruined everything, and in the third set Jeon Jin-woong did the same. The result was the worst possible situation for Dynasty Guild.
Of course, to Hwarang, who didn’t know about Lee Shin’s prophecy, it simply looked like a bunch of prideful kids engaged in childish political fighting.
Unlike the fierce previous sets, Dynasty was collapsing at a frightening speed. On the other hand, Mir Guild’s teamwork was reaching its peak.
Lee Hye-jung spread her poison mist while Sanwang used fog. Their combination obscured vision.
Hiding within that obscured vision, Yu Ri-ra traded damage one-sidedly. Park Su-bin summoned the giant’s arm every so often, turning the surroundings into a wasteland.
In the meantime, Park Jeong-seok waited, eyes fixed solely on Ssaurabi.
They steadily advanced toward the mid lane.
Five versus five.
Both guilds had finally gathered all five members in the mid lane.
Dynasty, who trusted their superior power and played to their strengths.
Mir Guild, who operated boldly despite being at a disadvantage.
Today would decide whose answer was correct.
Mir Guild had pushed all the way to the second tower and was now even threatening the inhibitor tower inside the base.
They weren’t in a hurry at all. It was as if they were saying, This is what you wanted, right? They had built a perfect iron fortress right in front of Dynasty and were slowly tightening the noose.
On the other hand, Dynasty was the one in a hurry now.
Their operation had already collapsed, and the situation was worsening in real time. They couldn’t even see a future. With communication breaking down even in this urgent moment, how could they possibly see one?
In the end, the first to draw their sword was Dynasty.
The one who stepped up to take the bullet was Hwarang Kim Yu-shin.
Tower Destroyed.
The daggers turned into flashes of light, piercing through the poison-filled fog.
It wasn’t just one. The daggers spread out in a fan shape. Where would they go?
While Park Jeong-seok watched with wide eyes, Ssaurabi finally moved. His target was Sanwang, the one he had aimed for several times already.
The instant Park Jeong-seok tried to throw himself in that direction, Ssaurabi twisted at a right angle in mid-air and changed course sharply.
He broke free from the mark in an instant.
Even in this chaotic state, he had proven that his individual skill was real.
His target was Park Su-bin. If they could just take him out, Mir Guild was nothing.
Dynasty responded to Ssaurabi’s movement.
Cursed arrows poured in from every direction at once. Lightning several times larger than normal struck down. And at the forefront of that magical bombardment was the advancing Hwarang Kim Yu-shin.
The surrounded Park Su-bin fiddled with his gauntlet. His eyes turned red from the Ka Rakkum Set effect. The giant’s arm floating around him spread its hands wide as if inviting them to come.
At that moment, Sanwang and Park Su-bin looked at each other.
Can you do it?
I’ll try.
Kim Yu-shin charged in with his shield from outside the giant arm’s range. He ran to fulfill his role.
If that shield struck Park Su-bin now, the story would change.
It would change, but—
‘Yu Ri-ra’ has killed ‘Kang Han-bi’.
The camera captured Yu Ri-ra hiding among the bushes.
The self-proclaimed pride of the Korean Army, a proper stance learned from her father. And the big, beautiful gun held in her hands was…
The sniper rifle that had never been shown before fired.
A bullet wrapped in flash pierced straight through Jeon Jin-woong’s forehead.
‘Yu Ri-ra’ has killed ‘Jeon Jin-woong’.