The Gamble That Worked: Mir Guild's Return to the Past
4th place.
They barely scraped together 3 points and held on to the overall 1st-place spot. What made it even more shocking was that this miracle was achieved not with the main roster on rotation, but with the second team.
This was huge. Absolutely massive.
Every major broadcast station immediately put together special segments on the shocking event.
— "This isn't just about defending their points. Mir Guild has shown the league an entirely new possibility!"
— "I've been saying it for a while—trends come full circle. Look what happens when you dismiss old strategies."
The gains Mir Guild and Lee Shin secured from this victory were immeasurable.
First, they finally got some breathing room in their murderous schedule.
Even the experts agreed the current league schedule was insane. Especially for members participating in the guild wars, training time was being completely eaten away.
Sanwang had already been worried about the condition of "Lee Shin's Kids," so when the second team bought them an entire week, he was genuinely overjoyed.
Next came the experience points fed to the second team.
Lee Shin was even more pleased about this than Sanwang. He went so far as to open an emergency live stream just to recite endless praise.
— "You saw what our little ones did, right? That's how it's done! Kya~! Do you know how much prep I put in from the start to feed them experience? I'm actually tearing up. Huh? You asking if the beginning and now are different? Of course they are—it's a whole different dimension!"
Gradually adapting them to the league from the start and steadily feeding them experience was completely different from throwing them in midway and scrambling to catch up.
The answer was obvious.
Finally, the core point—and perhaps the real keyword of this shocking raid war.
The return to the past. That gamble had paid off.
The three major analysis channels all expressed their respect for Lee Shin and Mir Guild's bold move.
The discussions were long and the reactions varied, but the conclusions were the same.
1. Annihilation strategies definitely work.
: If your execution is as sloppy as theirs.
2. If you're short on brains, make your body suffer.
: That's why they don't have Sanwang, right?
3. If you only do what you've always done, you have to put in the effort.
: Lazy bastards, tsk tsk!
Korea's three most famous analysts were all singing the same tune—praising Lee Shin and Mir Guild while roasting the other guilds.
So who would show up at a time like this?
The Yongbungs, already swollen from several upheavals, were now fully pumped by the second team's performance and began tearing into every rival fandom.
The three guilds ranked above Mir Guild could only grumble things like "We'll do better next time" or "Should we field a second team too?" But the guilds below Mir were in a completely different situation.
Their comment sections were pure hellfire.
Eventually, the inevitable comments began to appear.
Fans telling their guilds to swallow their pride and follow Lee Shin's example.
But the guilds had their own circumstances.
And those circumstances were……
* * *
'You think I don't want to copy them?'
Baekgeom Guild representative Jang Yo-han let out a sigh in his heart.
Experts and fans could rant all they wanted about Mir Guild's annihilation strategy, but the ones most shocked were obviously the guilds themselves.
Those people could laugh and talk all they wanted—it ended there. But for the guilds, this was directly tied to their standings. Standings meant value, and value meant money.
From that perspective, Baekgeom Guild was the biggest victim of this incident.
Because they had been pushed down by those damn bastards.
Right at the 3-point line they had taken for granted.
4th. Mir Guild (+3)
―――――――――
5th. Baekgeom Guild (+2)
'The more I look at it, the more pissed I get.'
Jang Yo-han chewed his nicotine gum even more furiously.
Yeah, it was just one point. No need to get worked up. But even as he told himself that, the things those bastards had taken away twisted his insides.
'They preserved stamina, gave the reserves experience, secured points, and monopolized all the attention. On top of that, they dug up an ancient annihilation strategy and shook up the entire league.'
Those bastards took everything.
The problem was, as already mentioned, they couldn't just switch to it now.
Fans who knew nothing could say whatever they wanted, but guilds didn't work that simply. If it were that easy, would the analysis team have been stuck at the office for a week straight?
Jang Yo-han cut off the rambling presentation and asked,
"Fine. Stop beating around the bush and summarize it cleanly. The conclusion is we can't do what those bastards did. The reason is we have zero preparation, right?"
He gestured at the screen replaying Mir's second-team match.
The analysis team leader took a deep breath.
"As you said, Representative. Attempting that annihilation strategy with our current situation would be impossible."
It might look like you just need to kill everything, but reality was completely different.
"The current league trend, whether in raid wars or guild wars, is all about speed. That means not just dealers, but supports and tanks too need good mobility."
"I know. That damn old man created it."
Speed battles, mobile warfare, activity volume, optimization, and so on.
The league had shifted to running more and maintaining a faster tempo.
Naturally, every guild prepared for the league with this trend in mind.
And now they were supposed to adopt an annihilation strategy that completely went against the current meta?
There would be countless problems.
"First, we'd have to replace all our gear. Everything we currently have is focused on mobility. If we're doing annihilation, we'd have to change all of it."
Equipment that prioritized ease of movement even at the cost of some defense. That wouldn't work in a drawn-out annihilation war where you had to hold your ground through countless battles.
"Next, we'd have to overhaul all our training. It can't coexist with our existing strategies."
If the existing speed-focused raid strategy was a sprint, the annihilation war shown by Mir's second team was a marathon.
Both involved running, but the mechanics were completely different. If they wanted to copy Mir Guild, they'd have to rebuild their team from the ground up.
"And finally, this is the decisive factor……"
Even if they somehow got the gear with money falling from the sky and ran training all night, would the people change?
The last issue was the people themselves—the squad.
"……We've already built our squad around this fast-tempo trend. They're all hunters specialized for that. If we try to run a slow annihilation strategy with them……"
"It'd be suicide. That's why that little bastard pulled this card at this exact timing."
Baekgeom Guild was a championship-caliber team.
Their representative, Jang Yo-han, wasn't an ordinary person. He had already figured out the angle.
Lee Shin, that little bastard, had been forcing other guilds into a choice from the very beginning.
"If we blindly step onto the board he created……"
"As I just explained, there's a high chance we'll collapse."
That was the worst possible outcome.
And every major guild representative would know this much.
But this was where the real problem began. Even if the representatives understood, the general public didn't know these behind-the-scenes details. Naturally, that included fans and the media. And if you followed that chain upward……
"……The sponsors will waver."
"They're surprisingly susceptible to public opinion."
Because of the skyrocketing player salaries, many people didn't realize it, but guilds were poorer than they seemed.
It wasn't a joke—plenty of major guilds were running at a loss. That's why they needed sponsors and parent companies.
And these people didn't really care about how guilds operated.
"If we stick to our old strategies and underperform, public opinion will explode. When that angry sentiment reaches the sponsors, pressure will come down. Lower-ranked guild representatives won't be able to withstand that."
And then it would be over.
Everyone would die.
"Even so, isn't that a stretch? Surely a representative in his mid-twenties wouldn't have that level of calculation……"
"He does. I've seen his eyes before. That guy's a complete lunatic."
He had witnessed Lee Shin standing before the King of All in North Korea. That gaze…… was truly insane.
"That bastard. Once he wants something, he has to have it or he can't rest. He doesn't care about means or methods. Even if it means throwing himself away, he'll take it."
"That's chilling."
"……Shit. This is driving me crazy. What the hell do people see in that lunatic that they're sucking up to him?"
Lee Do Group's financial power.
The intellect of a genius representative.
Plus an unpredictable madness.
And finally, that inexplicable charm that earned him endless fan support despite being this deranged.
A type of representative the guild world had never seen before.
One thing was certain. Lee Shin was dangerous. He wasn't just a threat to the league—he was a threat to the entire guild industry.
"The upcoming competitive raid war. We're in the same group as those bastards?"
"Yes."
"……Damn, the timing couldn't be worse."
The best way to deal with a madman was to avoid him, but they were already tangled up from the start. A sigh escaped him at the cursed situation.
Jang Yo-han checked the clock and stood up.
"Let's get up for now. We need to eat dinner before we can have a meeting or do anything else."
Just as forced overtime was about to be confirmed,
the team leader approached the representative and whispered.
"Representative, there's something I need to tell you……"
"What is it? Spit it out."
"It's…… Gwang-seob's condition isn't good."
"That bastard!! Why are you telling me this now!!"
Park Gwang-seob.
The core of Baekgeom Guild.
The name of Korea's 3rd-ranked Sword Master.
* * *
Park Gwang-seob looked at his phone with a displeased expression.
They had dropped to 5th.
Just a few years ago, his guild had been fighting bloody battles with Kirin Guild in the finals. Now they were 5th.
To Park Gwang-seob, who valued face and reputation above all else, this ranking was humiliating.
Rankers naturally became the face of the guild due to their skill and fame.
So when things were going well, they hogged all the glory, but when things went wrong, they received the most criticism and mockery.
That was why Park Gwang-seob had become prime bait.
Grind.
Park Gwang-seob gritted his teeth.
Meta carry, trend, meta……
Labels that stuck to Sword Master Park Gwang-seob like a stigma.
In truth, it wasn't entirely wrong. Due to his trait, Park Gwang-seob was the type who didn't perform well in slow-tempo metas.
Meanwhile, as match tempos gradually sped up, the meta naturally became more aggressive, and Park Gwang-seob soared during that period.
The interesting part was that the person who gave him the opportunity to rise was Sanwang.
— "If I had to pick one, it'd be Park Gwang-seob. He'll probably lead the aggressive trend going forward. Ah, he's still a player in League 2, but he's really strong. Strong enough that I'd like to play alongside him someday."
Indeed, the very next year after those words, he transferred to RO and proved he was a genius, rising as a legendary star.
That was how the legend of the Sword Master began.
However, there was no denying that his resurgence had an unreasonable element, and haters kept hammering that point. Calling him a meta-carry ranker every year.
Still, as the saying went that he had no flaws except his personality, Park Gwang-seob had until now used such controversies and doubts as fuel for growth.
But.
"What do you people even know?"
The shameful number 5 had wounded his high pride, and like many hunters in such situations, he committed what a certain coach once called "a waste of life."
A gamble is just a gamble.