Thanks for the Meal

It would hardly be an exaggeration to call the last little while the prime of Oh Junseo's life.

Awakening as a player hadn't been enough on its own. He'd picked up a genuinely useful skill, caught a scouter's eye with it, and landed a trainee spot with none other than MK Thunders. True to a corporate powerhouse, the support was lavish — ultra-expensive items he couldn't have dreamed of as an ordinary player, a professional training system, and rigorous management besides.

At least in my level bracket, there shouldn't be anyone who can keep up with me.

That was what he thought.

Thwack!

Right up until he saw the scene in front of him.

"Wh-what even is this..."

The guy in the hoodie had blown past him and taken off. His gear wasn't even decent, and the weapon he'd shown up with was some log of a thing, so Junseo had spared him a quiet little sneer.

Crack! Crunch! Crack!

Nothing about the scene now was funny.

Every time the man swung his arm, at least two goblins burst apart.

"Hah. There's no end to them."

He looked at the green runts packing his vision the way a man eyes a neatly boxed tray of chocolates, practically drooling. Then he kicked off the ground, and his form ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠vanished like a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heat haze.

All that remained to see or hear were goblins collapsing in endless sprays of blood—

"Kergh!"

"Keeegh!"

—and the screams rolling out across the field.

What the hell is that... he's nowhere near my level!

Oh Junseo's legs shook.

Normal matches on the Channel usually paired you with opponents of a similar level or rank, specifically to keep one person from running away with the game — the so-called seal-clubbing. Which meant that man had to be around his level too...

"Like hell he is!"

The words burst out of him before he could stop them.

The sheer volume of mana. The skill to sweep goblins aside in a single stroke. That was the kind of ability you only saw at level 20 or higher — upper Bronze, at the minimum. Rare even there.

"Oh Junseo! What are you doing!"

"Y-yeah...?"

"Don't yeah me! If you don't hunt right now, that guy's going to clean the whole place out!"

Kim Sujeong, who had joined as a trainee alongside him, hurried him along. She wasn't wrong. One person was monopolizing every goblin in the area.

"Tch... who is that guy!"

The two of them stared, rattled, at the name sitting on the rankings — the name holding first by an overwhelming margin.

Stats are honest about their numbers. A Strength of 7 lets you put out exactly seven's worth of force. A Stamina of 6 gives you exactly six's worth of stamina.

Well, my constitution runs my physical stats higher than they look. Even so, a fixed number doesn't fluctuate. That much is the same.

There is one stat that uniquely escapes the rule.

Mana.

For humanity, mana was an energy without precedent. More than fuel for skills, it could reinforce the body or amplify the senses — any number of uses. And when ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it came to handling mana like that—

Crack!

—I could call myself a specialist.

"And that's another one."

The goblin's head, caught by the club, warped into a shape past describing. A slick slurry of blood and brain matter soaked the ground.

"Kerrrk!"

Furious, maybe, that one of their own had been done in. The pack loosed poison-tipped arrows at me.

"Now that's some touching camaraderie."

I focused and drew the mana gathered in my arms and shoulders back to the pit of my stomach — the sensation of a small bead floating at the center of my chest. I unraveled it again, poured it this time into my knees and calves, and—

BOOM!

—kicked off with everything I had. My body shot upward like a cannon shell, and in an instant I was roughly thirteen meters in the air.

Mana's efficiency changes completely depending on how you use it. Right now mine was a mere 6, the lowest figure there is, barely different from a base stat. That I could still pull off a performance like this came down to one thing alone. My control was finer than that of most high-tier mages.

Before the regression, I had thrashed and clawed to keep from wasting so much as a single thread of the mana outside my body, and the precision had come to me on its own. A man with no mana, somehow ending up better at handling it than anyone — it didn't even rise to the level of a stale joke.

Not until I came back.

"Heh heh heh...!"

When I cleared the hail of poison arrows with the jump, fear and shock took root in the goblins' eyes.

To take that many of them at once...

"Yeah. This is the one."

I spread my mana and triggered the skill.

The effect was simple. It deployed a zone of intensified gravity, centered on me.

The problem was that I was caught in it too.

Vmmm—

A round, translucent violet barrier unfurled around me, and my body sank heavily under its weight. For the record, I was still hanging in open air.

Which meant—

"Here I coooome—!"

—that the strengthened gravity would drop me with tremendous acceleration.

This was the technique I had used most in the early days of my life as a player.

The goblins could only stare, dumbstruck, as I plummeted at a sudden, tremendous speed. No time to react at all.

KUUUUNG!

The club ground the whole stretch of ground beneath it.

System windows flashed in a wild stutter. I shoved them aside for a moment and cut the skill at once. For now, this was the only way I could use it.

"A-aaagh!"

"What the—!"

The players nearby cried out at the wreckage, as if a meteor had struck.

Heh...

A sharp, electric pain ran through both arms. Pain I could more than endure — no, pain that felt almost refreshing. As if to tell me this was no dream or illusion, but reality.

"Keheheh...! Kahahahaha!"

"Wh-what is with that guy..."

"He just smashed a whole goblin pack, and now he's laughing like a lunatic...!"

Because I was that glad.

"There's still... more left, right?"

I charged back into the forest.

. . .

A short while later, it was over. I wiped the sweat soaking my brow and stretched my back out straight.

"Hnnngh—hah! Whew. That feels great."

It was like working out to exhaustion for the first time in ages, then sweating it all out in a bathhouse.

A results message sent to every player.

"Two hundred eighty-six... Not bad, for something I did while enjoying myself."

I'd been taking it easy, just to get a feel for things, and I'd still cleared two hundred and fifty. A little disappointing that I hadn't broken three hundred.

"Two hundred eighty-six?!"

"Isn't first place usually around fifty? Sixty, at most..."

"Who even is that guy?"

"A corporate trainee? His gear doesn't look like it..."

The murmuring this time was a different kind from the start. Glances poured in from every direction, some of them stolen. The MK Thunders duo's were among them. Both pairs of eyes were shaking hard.

Tch. I do feel a little bad. Getting sneered at had heated me up a bit — but given where I actually stood, this match had been nothing but seal-clubbing.

I made a point of meeting their eyes, then offered an awkward smile and dipped my head.

"...!"

Their reactions split. The woman nodded back, more or less the same way.

"Ghk...! You...! Kkugh...!"

The man flushed red and pale by turns, grinding his teeth.

What's his problem. Well, I'd done everything I came to do. It hardly mattered now.

"Oh?"

The rewards were pretty generous. I'd expected the level, obviously — but two different stats going up? In most games you had to carry hard just to bump a single stat. This was an absurd figure.

And a full thousand Credits on top of it. An eye-opening sum for an unranked normal. The other players had probably walked away with around a hundred. The Thunders duo, second and third, maybe two hundred. Anyone outside the top ten might not have received a thing.

"First match, and the feeling's already this good?"

I hadn't eaten a thing today, and still I felt full.

Buuurp.

I patted a satisfied stomach and logged out.

A short while later.

Flash!

Park Yongdae — scouter for MK Thunders, and the very man who had brought Oh Junseo and Kim Sujeong in — flashed a white grin and welcomed the pair as they returned.

"Welcome back. Faster than I expected?"

"..."

"So, how was it? Your first match under Thunders. Gear that good, it's a whole different world, right?"

He snickered and tossed a crumpled paper cup into the trash.

"Who took first? You, Junseo, obviously?"

"...No."

"Then you, Sujeong?"

"I-it wasn't me either..."

At that, the light drained from Park Yongdae's face.

"...What?"

Now that he looked, the mood was wrong. Before they'd logged in, they'd been running their mouths about how first place was as good as theirs. Now they were thoroughly wilted. Oh Junseo seemed especially bitter — whatever had him so worked up, the hand clenched around his sword wouldn't stop shaking.

"You're telling me neither of you got first. What does that mean? Don't tell me a K1 trainee was in the same match."

The two of them were still raw rookies, short of even a proper newcomer's stats, and the players you could meet in the same match were all of a muchness. To get past them and take first in a place like that, you'd need to be at least a trainee from one of the Three Great Teams.

"Rough luck, then. Those guys—"

"No. He wasn't a trainee."

Kim Sujeong cut him off.

"Forget a trainee. His only piece of gear was one big wooden club. His clothes were just a hoodie and jeans..."

"What are you two even— aha. You're messing with me, aren't you? Quit joking and spit it out. I have to look this over and file it, you know?"

"..."

The two of them were utterly serious. No — less serious than simply too shaken for the words to come. The man they had just watched was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠seared into their minds, flickering past like a panorama.

"It'll be faster if you see it yourself."

Kim Sujeong worked the system and called up the list from the most recent match. Recorded there was a shocking figure.

"T-two hundred and eighty-six...?!"

Park Yongdae gaped and rubbed his eyes again and again. The number didn't change. Exactly 286. At the level of this match, it was a shocking figure that could never appear — that wasn't supposed to.

"Th-the footage..."

"...Here."

Play on the Channel was saved automatically, up through the last thirty matches. Only from your own point of view — but still.

From Kim Sujeong's viewpoint, one man's performance had been captured — dressed in shabby clothes, going around smashing the skulls of dozens of goblins like plastic toys.

Park Yongdae swallowed before he realized he was doing it.

"Jae...ha..."

He burned that name, sharp and clear, into his memory. The Korea Player League — the KPL. Onto that vast battlefield—

It was the moment his name first became known.