Balance Patch
“Don’t feel too pressured, everyone. It’s not like there’s anything on the line.”
Unlike Go Jaehyun’s team, which carried an air of grim determination, the Wadeulwadeul squad was lighthearted right from the jump. Truth be told, they were people who had no reason to take things so seriously in the first place.
“I’m a huge fan, Wadeul-nim! Thanks for picking me.”
“Thank you. Though I’ve only been streaming for two days, so I’m surprised I have fans already.”
“I just fall in love easily.”
The quip from their tank, WaPyaKya, drew a round of chuckles. It was one of those moments where the joke itself wasn't necessarily hilarious, but the warm, relaxed atmosphere made everyone laugh anyway. Wadeulwadeul’s team had struck that exact groove.
“What do you find entertaining about my stream?”
“You’re just fun, Noona. You’re kind of an archetype I’ve never seen before—almost like you don’t belong to this era.”
“How did you guess? I was actually cryogenically frozen, you know.”
So Rihwa let out a soft snicker as she bantered. Naturally, no one else laughed.
“Okay, that one was pretty dry.”
“Hahaha.”
The deadpan critique from their healer, Latima, prompted genuine laughter across the voice channel. The live chat reacted warmly as well. Glancing at the scrolling messages, So Rihwa clicked her tongue in mock indignance.
“Anyway, let’s win this.”
“Can we actually beat them, though? God Jaehyun is on the other side.”
“Well, if we lose, we lose.”
So Rihwa answered nonchalantly. If they lost, so what? The real significance of this match was that she was facing top-tier players in Royal Commando for the very first time.
A moment later, the loading screen flashed, and the battleground revealed itself.
“Ah, it’s Gwangmak Plateau.”
“Shouldn’t we run a sniper on this map?”
“Or do we just go full bulldozer with five melee picks?”
“Running five melees on the Plateau is kind of…”
True to their high rankings, the teammates immediately began debating strategy and team compositions.
“Just play whatever you’re most confident with,” So Rihwa instructed casually. “I’m going to pick what I want, too.”
Calling the shot, So Rihwa locked in Trooper. Trooper was the quintessential, well-rounded hitscan ranged DPS—a reliable pick that rarely suffered from severe map disadvantages or bad matchups. It was also the ranged hero So Rihwa felt most comfortable piloting. Besides, even if she listened to their tactical discourse, this was only her third day playing Royal Commando, so most of the high-level jargon flew right over her head anyway.
“Fair enough. We’re just here to have fun anyway.”
“Everyone lock in your mains.”
Once all five had locked in their primary characters, an incredulous scoff slipped past Latima’s lips.
“This composition is absolute cinema.”
That heavy sigh made everyone except So Rihwa burst into laughter. A team composition generally required a cohesive concept—synergistic picks that complemented one another’s strengths. Unfortunately, their respective comfort picks had practically zero chemistry.
Excluding Trooper, their lineup consisted of the following:
Mechanic, a defensive zone-control DPS whose core kit revolved around deploying sentry turrets;
Johann, a frontline tank carrying an expansive barrier shield;
Siren, a utility healer and buffer; and
Paracel, a secondary healer whose ultimate ability transformed him into a lethal offensive carry.
“This looks straight out of a casual quick-play lobby.”
“Hey, who cares?”
“True, true.”
If this had been a ranked competitive match, the draft alone would have prompted instant despair. While Johann was a solid, standard tank, both healers were off-support hybrids designed to weave damage and utility alongside healing.
Furthermore, Trooper relied on exceptional mobility to dart between angles and chip away at health bars. Trooper synergized best alongside agile dive damage-dealers who could capitalize on openings; paired with a stationary anchor like Mechanic, their damage output would inevitably fragment, making it exceedingly difficult to secure confirmed kills.
Still, this was an unranked custom match that awarded zero experience points. There was no need to sweat over team synergy.
So Rihwa merely checked who their tank was. Healers would do their jobs regardless, but a Trooper’s playstyle had to adapt depending on the frontline vanguard. Since their tank was Johann with his broad deployable shield, the optimal tactic was simple: tuck behind Johann’s cover and lay down steady fire.
“Alright, let’s roll!”
The blast doors of the spawn chamber hissed open, and both teams surged forward into the arena. Gwangmak Plateau was a symmetric point-capture battleground. Teams first had to secure and hold the solitary temple standing in the center of the vast highlands for a set duration before the subsequent capture zones unlocked.
Trailing behind on Siren, Latima suddenly gasped in shock. Trooper, holding the fastest base movement speed, was sprinting straight down an utterly bizarre lane—a long, narrow, linear corridor that served as the primary dueling alley for snipers.
“Wait, Wadeul-nim! If you go down that corridor—!”
“Huh?”
Pshk!
A crisp, suppressed crack echoed through the canyon. A heavy caliber round tore straight through Trooper’s forehead, sending the avatar tumbling backward onto the dusty stone. A sharp vibration buzzed across So Rihwa’s headset, leaving a momentary tingle in its wake.
First Blood had been conceded barely ten seconds into the round.
“Concede the point for now! Regroup!”
As the highest-ranked player on the squad, Latima immediately made the call to fall back.
Far down at the opposing end of the corridor, thin wisps of smoke drifted lazily from the barrel of Mikhail’s sniper rifle, the sniper draped beneath a deep green cowl.
Every time the charging meter on the sniper rifle filled to maximum, a lethal round snapped through the air—and without fail, another life was claimed.
“This is actually disgusting.”
“No, seriously, Jaehyun-nim. Why aren’t you a DPS main?”
God Jaehyun’s teammates literally had nothing to do. Before any proper teamfight could even ignite, Go Jaehyun picked off at least one target, stifling any real engagement before it began.
“I just prefer playing support. Aim is just as important on healers, you know.”
“I mean, sure, but… wow. They can’t even put up a fight.”
“Their team comp is pretty awful to begin with,” Go Jaehyun replied offhandedly.
In truth, Wadeulwadeul’s team posed no threat whatsoever. Their composition lacked any coherent game plan, obviously locked in for casual fun. In stark contrast, God Jaehyun’s squad had drafted a textbook single-sniper dive composition.
A single-sniper dive comp was straightforward: give the sniper full freedom to find sightlines while the remaining four players dove straight into the enemy lines to fracture their formation. It leaned heavily on the sniper’s mechanical skill, but assuming the marksman hit their shots, few strategies were as brutally effective.
“This is straight-up bullying.”
“Yeah… maybe I took it a bit too far,” Go Jaehyun admitted sheepishly as their healer, GuangdongSniper, chuckled.
As the caliber of the lobby escalated, Wadeulwadeul’s flashy movement and raw aim no longer shone. High-tier lobbies simply never offered clean firing angles. Peeling open those tightly guarded angles through clever flanks and spatial awareness was the hallmark of game sense and positioning—areas where Wadeulwadeul’s pathing was far too honest and predictable.
Did I overestimate her? he wondered.
Granted, occasional kill notifications popped up under Wadeulwadeul’s name that made him wonder how on earth she had landed the shot, but they usually occurred after the formation had collapsed and the teamfight was already lost. They were empty kills that had zero impact on the outcome.
Well, of course that’s how it is. She literally just started playing the game.
Perhaps he had overreacted to the revelation that she played with zero aim assist. While her raw kinetic control was undeniably impressive, facing her directly proved she wasn’t particularly threatening.
Down the road, once Wadeulwadeul developed proper macro game sense, things might be different. But right now? He felt foolish for having harbored competitive fire toward a rookie streamer who had barely touched the game. He was a seasoned professional, after all.
“This round looks like it’s wrapping up, so let’s shuffle teams once it’s over.”
“Yeah, sounds good. I’m starting to feel bad for Wadeul-nim.”
Aside from Go Jaehyun, everyone in the lobby was a fan from Wadeulwadeul’s stream; crushing her spirit was the last thing they wanted. Go Jaehyun felt the same way, which was why he suggested rebalancing the rosters.
Point-capture maps featured three objectives. For Team A and Team B, the first contested zone was positioned dead center—the central temple on Gwangmak Plateau. If Team B captured the temple, the next objective shifted right to the front yard outside Team A’s spawn gate.
Matches were decided by the first to reach three points. A clean 3-0 sweep required claiming the center point once and then capturing the opposing team’s doorstep twice in succession.
Under normal circumstances, achieving a 3-0 sweep was extremely rare; because the final point sat directly outside the enemy spawn, the defenders enjoyed a massive spawn advantage unless the skill disparity was so overwhelming that the attackers could spawn-camp them.
And right now, God Jaehyun’s team was doing precisely that: pinning Wadeulwadeul’s squad at their doorstep. Jaehyun’s suffocating sniper accuracy completely dominated the map. No matter how tightly Wadeulwadeul’s squad huddled behind Johann’s barrier, the moment the diving frontline disrupted their ranks, lethal sightlines cracked wide open.
Inevitably, the battle on Gwangmak Plateau concluded in an overwhelming victory for God Jaehyun’s side. In a standard quick-play lobby, the match would have concluded right then and there.
Yet for some reason, the game transitioned into the next round on a brand-new map.
“Huh?”
Confusion rippled through the lobby. Go Jaehyun blinked blankly for a second before realizing his blunder.
“Ah… I made the wrong room settings.”
Instead of setting up a casual custom match, he had reflexively applied competitive tournament rules out of habit from pro scrims.
Under competitive rules, matches operated on a best-of-three format. That meant they were slated to slaughter the other team all over again.
“Since it’s a custom, can’t we just leave and remake?”
“Yeah, we can just remake the lobby.”
It was no big deal; they could simply disband the room and create a fresh one. Go Jaehyun typed into match-wide chat.
Go Jaehyun was already hovering his cursor over the exit button, as were his teammates. Playing another round felt entirely pointless.
However, the response that popped up in all-chat shortly after was completely unexpected.
Faced with that cryptic reply, Go Jaehyun dropped a question mark, but no further message arrived from Wadeulwadeul.
Round two kicked off on the map Welcome to the Jungle. This terrain was the polar opposite of Gwangmak Plateau—densely packed with foliage, towering cover, and claustrophobic corridors designed to force chaotic, close-quarters skirmishes.
“Let’s stick to the same game plan,” Go Jaehyun said.
There was no reason to alter a strategy that had worked so overwhelmingly in the previous round. An exceptional sniper could shine anywhere; as long as the marksman performed, a single-sniper dive comp remained nearly unstoppable.
Just as the round began and the first clash erupted, Go Jaehyun drew first blood once again. Pulling his eye away from the scope, he executed a rapid tactical reload. Then, the instant he mechanically snapped back into his scope to charge another shot—
An unbelievable sequence of kill logs flooded the feed.
“…Wait, what the hell?”
Go Jaehyun muttered under his breath, tracking the scene through his magnified optic.
Standing tall amidst three freshly collapsed avatars was the swordsman character, Ink Blade. Since the kill feed credited every execution to Wadeulwadeul, that meant the player controlling the blade was none other than her.
Having watched her gameplay through his sniper lens, Go Jaehyun recognized it instantly. The mechanical mastery, the spatial execution, the sheer nuance of movement—it was on an entirely different dimension compared to when she piloted any other hero.
Which meant one thing.
Her true main… was that swordsman.