The Colossus Awakens
The second half of the season had begun.
Every guild poured everything they had into seizing their final chances and delivering their last results. Fans were expecting outcomes worthy of being called the most legendary Breaking Season in history.
And so the Breaking Season concluded, and the first match began.
At the crucial commentator's desk, the Core Guild representative clutched her head. Then she howled like a witch who had just been fired.
“Aaaaargh!! Just die already!!”
Only the horrific keywords “fired” and “witch” could properly capture her current state. It was that bad.
Of course it was. The answer she and her front-office staff had created for the Breaking Season—after canceling their own vacations—was being blown apart in real time.
— “I… I have no words.”
— “Aaaah……”
— “Commissioner. Commentator Choi Moon-sung.”
— “Y-Yes?”
— “Why don’t we slowly explain the situation together? I think we should start with the object.”
— “It was Fenrir, wasn’t it?”
Top and mid. Mid and bottom. Massive objects kept spawning in rotation. Each type granted a permanent buff to the entire team upon defeat. Fenrir, for example, increased agility and athletic ability.
Because these objects were the most decisive points on the Rift, large-scale teamfights could essentially be seen as battles over who would claim them.
And against the Mir Guild, Core Guild had decided to stake everything on these objects.
“We’re outclassed in raw power! We can’t keep up with their speed! So this is the best answer we can give!!”
Being outclassed in power made laning difficult, and being unable to match their speed made macro play unbearable. It was the sorrow and reality of a lower-tier guild.
So Core Guild had come up with their own answer: “Let’s at least get hit as little as possible.”
“Drag the game out while taking as little damage as we can. Slow down their high-tempo play and force it into our pace. Stretch it to 40 minutes, 50 minutes, deep into the late game.”
That was how they planned to drag the soaring dragon down to the ground they stood on. The leash for that plan was the “object.”
And that direction itself was extremely sharp. Even the casters praised it in unison.
— “It was truly, truly a wise decision. It almost worked, too.”
— “In the end, Core Guild sacrificed top as bait and had the other four launch a surprise attack on the mid-bottom river to contest the object.”
— “It was perfect timing.”
Hwa-rang and San-wang’s duo headed toward the baited top lane. Meanwhile, Yu Ri-ra was still in the fountain, resupplying.
Core Guild had successfully exploited that tiny operational gap. It was the result of her and her staff dissecting Mir Guild’s matches down to the second. At that moment, Core Guild was celebrating.
“Until those bastards started going crazy!!”
Right on cue, the highlight reel played. The casters grew excited along with it.
— “Park Su-bin and Baek Yeon-woo!”
— “The Monster and the Genius—this duo just made something happen!”
It started with Baek Yeon-woo.
Baek Yeon-woo drew his twin daggers and charged the riverbank. His expression looked slightly odd(?), but he still rushed in fiercely, piercing straight into Core Guild’s formation.
The Core Guild members who had been attacking Fenrir had their attention split. While they were panicking, Park Su-bin’s light spheres crashed in from the rear, throwing the battlefield into even greater chaos.
— “They tried to switch targets and deal with Baek Yeon-woo, but he just smiled.”
— “It was a lethal smile.”
— “And so the showtime begins.”
Surrounded by four enemies, Baek Yeon-woo bared his fangs and grinned, then scattered daggers all around him.
His body followed the daggers, moving in a ghostly manner that defied the laws of physics—Ssaltaebi’s signature technique, Target Moving.
More precisely, it was Baek Yeon-woo’s own version of Target Moving, reinterpreted through his Heavenly Eye and Genius traits.
Even so, the numerical disadvantage of four-to-one was hard to overcome. Baek Yeon-woo looked as precarious as a candle in the wind.
But then Park Su-bin’s light spheres began to glow.
And then they bloomed.
It wasn’t a metaphor. They became real flowers of light.
— “The petals scattered and protected Baek Yeon-woo!”
— “Just by eyeballing it, there were hundreds, thousands of them. And they were all shields. Can you believe it? Every single one was a shield!!”
The Baekhwa that had handed Park Su-bin a defeat in the previous round had now become flowers of light and become his shield.
The moment he trusted that Park Su-bin would block the fatal blows, Baek Yeon-woo became even more aggressive and dazzling as he tore through the enemies around him.
Second by second, time dragged on, and at that moment the Core Guild representative let out a sigh.
“It’s over……”
It was over.
And her judgment was correct.
Suddenly the surroundings darkened. When she turned around, a tidal wave of plants was blotting out the sky.
— “45 seconds! The Park-Baek duo held Core Guild in a 2-vs-4 for 45 seconds!”
— “Insane. Holding for 45 seconds at the major level? Think about it—at the major level you can’t even waste a single second, and they just made four people waste 45 seconds.”
It was a decision no ordinary team would ever make. No, it was a decision they shouldn’t make. It was handing over kills and a reckless gamble that could become the foundation for a comeback.
Yet the Mir Guild—these two young boys—had attempted that reckless feat……
“And they succeeded.”
At the smallest scale, it was one set. Zooming out a little, it was this entire round. And if you looked even wider, it was the entire Breaking Season that she and her staff had poured their blood, sweat, and tears into.
All of it had been trampled by two teenage boys.
— “The scene they showed in the Girin match was no coincidence.”
— “It’s a different kind of shock from the Hwa-rang & San-wang duo. It doesn’t feel like strategy or tactics—it feels like watching stars.”
Blinding talent.
Shining synergy.
A radiant duo.
— “Now I’m even looking forward to it. Just how far is the Mir Guild going to show us?”
— “The second half is going to be fun. I can say that with certainty!”
— “Mir Guild is moving in to close out the set. Once again, leading the charge are Park Su-bin and Baek Yeon-woo.”
A moment later, as the casters’ voices rang out, the Nexus on screen shattered. Watching the Nexus collapse without even putting up a fight, the Core representative suddenly had a thought.
“Maybe it was all a smokescreen……”
The vacation talk—maybe they had used a cruise vacation as a smokescreen. While everyone was letting their guard down, they had secretly been sharpening new fangs behind the scenes.
It was a pathetic self-consolation to ease her misery, but words have power.
“That’s right, it was a smokescreen! That was their secret weapon!”
It was the beginning of a delusion.
Meanwhile, at the Mir Guild headquarters.
Chae Dong-ha, who had been watching the match, saw it too.
“This is Lee Shin’s scheme. He said he was going on vacation, but he was actually preparing this. How cowardly, Mir Guild. How insidious……”
Core Guild fans were claiming in the chat that Lee Shin had shamelessly waged a media war. He had pretended to enjoy a cruise vacation through SNS and YouTube to make his opponents let their guard down, all while grinding Park Su-bin and Baek Yeon-woo.
On the other hand, the Yongbung-i were worshipping as usual.
When did he prepare something like this? He didn’t even give us a hint, so we were completely fooled. Hmph, did you think we’d like this kind of surprise gift? I love it too much, agh……
The two boys who would lead the guild had already melted their happiness circuits into nothing.
Anyway, whether they were cursing or worshipping, everyone had accepted as fact that all of this was Lee Shin’s preparation.
“Dream interpretation instead of the dream itself, huh.”
Chae Dong-ha stared for a long time with a dumbfounded expression, then let out a hollow laugh and turned around.
“You must be pleased. Taking all the credit without lifting a single finger.”
“This is all because this great one has accumulated so much virtue in daily life, is it not?”
Hohoho!
Lee Shin crossed his legs and laughed elegantly. His chin, sharply raised at a 45-degree angle like a pompous royal, was unbearably arrogant. Of course, Chae Dong-ha was simply at a loss for words.
After all, these were two people who had repeatedly eaten, drunk, and slept together.
He had tormented them by saying that if the president joined without any tact, they couldn’t play comfortably. He had slept for 15 hours to make up for lost sleep, then wandered out in his three-line slippers, half-asleep, and had a glass of soju with his seafood ramen.
He had lived like the most carefree man in the world, yet the world was worshipping him as a genius.
“Hehe, our Dong-ha hyung is all prickly because he couldn’t play with Cho-a noona.”
“……That’s not it.”
“Hehehe.”
Well, Lee Shin agreed to some extent.
Even he hadn’t expected this. He had never imagined that Bokchi would suddenly evolve.
「???」, 「Advent」, 「Mechanic」, 「Command System (New!!)」, 「Mana Understanding (S)」, 「Double Casting」
When he first saw this, how dumbfounded had he been?
He had known that Park Su-bin had been gloomy after being harshly beaten by Man-wang, who had brought out the Baekhwa Sword.
Lee Shin hadn’t thought much of it. He already knew Park Su-bin’s potential.
‘I thought that with time, he wouldn’t even care about someone like Man-wang anymore.’
But apparently Bokchi had taken it more seriously than he thought. Like a real sunfish, he had kept ramming and ramming in order to overcome it.
In the process he had filmed some strange live broadcast that had thrown the PR team into emergency mode, but anyway—he had kept headbutting the neighborhood like a sunfish until, before anyone knew it, he had come back with something new on his status window.
‘Ta-da, I awakened~? Yeah, right.’
Park Su-bin’s unique trait, Command System, capable of responding to any variable.
If the traits he had awakened so far had revealed Bokchi’s strength, then Command System was something else entirely. Depending on how it was used, it was an all-rounder trait that could be applied not only to teamwork but also to command.
But the reason this trait was even more special to Park Su-bin—
‘Because it goes beyond supplementing his only weakness, his passive personality, and completely transforms him into an active one.’
It was, in a sense, the final stage of physical conditioning to create a true universe-destroying “monster.”
And Park Su-bin had awakened it himself.
“Pfft, even thinking about it now is ridiculous.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“That guy, Bokchi. It’s not like some kid’s enlightenment—he was just struggling by himself and actually pulled it off.”
“Strictly speaking, he wasn’t alone. I heard he gave the 1st team members quite a hard time. I also heard that Hwa-rang-nim’s daughter played a big role in the process.”
“As expected of So-yeon. What kind of gift should I give our So-yeon?”
At this point, there was no need to watch the match anymore.
They say you have to compare to know which is longer or shorter, but the difference between Core Guild and Mir Guild was obvious even without comparing.
As proof, the current match had already turned into a mad movie starring Park Su-bin and Baek Yeon-woo, who had become his blade.
— “Baek Yeon-woo and Park Su-bin are diving in again! This time Hwa-rang is with them too! Core Guild’s choice is…… to fight back.”
— “Whoa, does this guild not even consider being outnumbered? They’re charging into a 3-vs-5 without hesitation.”
Baek Yeon-woo was rampaging at the very front while Hwa-rang supported from behind. With Hwa-rang taking over the support role, Park Su-bin performed the role needed for the best possible outcome.
The giant that revealed itself overturned the ground. The river turned into waves and blocked vision.
— “Baek Yeon-woo becomes a beam of light through the obscured vision. Before anyone knew it, he was holding a greatsword in his hand!”
— “Silver shields raining down from the sky. My god, he’s using defensive skills as crowd control.”
— “Baek Yeon-woo exploits the confusion to dive in. Once again, it’s the monster Park Su-bin who creates the stage! Baek Yeon-woo is dancing with his sword while stepping on Park Su-bin’s light spheres!”
Under the three’s onslaught, Core Guild was eventually forced to retreat.
— “Ever since Mir Guild realized that Core Guild was aiming for the object, they haven’t given up a single one! They’re crushing their will to fight!”
— “What we should be paying attention to is the Park Su-bin and Baek Yeon-woo duo. It’s so good it’s almost scary to see in a dream.”
At that moment, Lee Shin lowered the volume with the remote.
“Aren’t you going to keep watching?”
“It’s obvious how it’ll end.”
“You’re right.”
“More importantly, that’s not what’s important right now, is it, Dong-ha hyung?”
“Here it is.”
Chae Dong-ha silently handed over the tablet without another word. Lee Shin accepted it with a smile.
The Mir Guild’s current performance was at its peak.
It was even better than Lee Shin had expected. There was no longer any need to worry about that.
Rather, what was more important now was to observe the movements of the other guilds.
That was why the tablet displayed match footage and analyses of each guild.
And the most eye-catching one was—
“As expected, this one, huh.”