[1st Place: NodeMaster]
“NodeMaster?”
Sa-yoon furrowed his brows as he checked the name next to the top rank. He didn’t even need to search his memory. A complete stranger.
Did they transfer servers? Ever since Killer’s server transfer became a hot topic on the forums, some players had started moving, choosing to be the head of a snake rather than the tail of a dragon.
‘Maybe they’re one of those people.’
Sa-yoon had briefly considered a server transfer himself. It was back when he found out that the killer who had relentlessly hunted him for months had moved to Cygnus.
Now, here he was, gaming all day in a duo with the very person who once made him think about leaving. It was oddly sentimental. Life really was unpredictable.
On top of that, Killer turned out to be a surprisingly good duo partner. They never went AFK, always logged in exactly on time, and if they got on early, they even made sure to report in. The dry chat window was constantly filled with Killer’s login notifications.
Sa-yoon also liked that they never made real-life plans. If anything, it was Sa-yoon himself who had ruined an entire day without notice due to sudden obligations.
His assessment of Killer was shifting.
—I’ve been thinking… don’t you think we actually make a pretty good team?
Sa-yoon’s gaze lingered on Killer, who stood beside Chasa. The hunter, who had ignored the common trend of choosing small characters that were harder to target, tossed a dagger into the air and caught it while chatting with a Warlock. It was an inter-class compatibility motion.
Of all things, why did they have to say that? Feeling oddly flustered, Sa-yoon moved his character a few steps away. Killer seemed to be away for the moment, as there was no response.
Sa-yoon reopened the ranking page. The real-time rankings had already shifted within that short span. The lower ranks were in a fierce battle, but the first place spot remained unchanged.
Still, NodeMaster wouldn’t last the weekend at the top. Even though server transfers were happening for rank chasers, the outcome was obvious.
There’s no paradise for those who flee—only another battlefield where they arrive.
After all, anyone skilled enough to claim the #1 spot on a new server wouldn’t have transferred in the first place. Unless they had a bullet in their head.
…Except for the lunatics in our guild.
Cygnus had a reputation as a backwater server, but at the end of the day, veterans were the same everywhere. No server was going to just hand over the #1 spot to some newcomer. Sure enough, every name below NodeMaster was familiar.
It didn’t matter who sat at the top. If he just earned more points, that was all that mattered. He had the time, stamina, and confidence to do it. So at this point, Sa-yoon wasn’t particularly worried.
And then, another week passed. The weekend ended, the weekdays rolled in, and soon, it was the weekend again.
During that time, Chasa had been grinding nonstop with Killer and had finally settled at rank 23. In just two weeks, the season would end. From this point on, it was practically the real beginning.
[Guild] Freedeal: The top rank scores are seriously packed tight. It’s like someone stitched them together.
[Guild] Shokrates: Yeah, one loss and you drop 30 places. T_T
[Guild] Shokrates: For real, one slip and it’s over.
[Guild] Furple: I gained 3 points and lost 4. These fluctuations are insane—feels like I’m watching my stock portfolio.
[Guild] Shokrates: 3 points? What am I supposed to do with 3 points?
[Guild] Freedeal: Speaking of stocks, how’s the market looking these days?
[Guild] Furple: Deleted my stock app.
[Guild] Oath’s Vow: LOOOOOL
[Guild] Shokrates: Oath’s not even laughing, he’s in pain.
[Guild] Oath’s Vow: Shhh…
[Guild] Shokrates: If you’d given me that money, I would’ve put it to good use. T_T
[Guild] Oath’s Vow: Wow, just openly coveting other people’s money now?
[Guild] Freedeal: When I first met Jeon-gi, he had no sense of time, but at least he was a good guy.
[Guild] Freedeal: Guess he caught it from Frog.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: ?
[Guild] Shokrates: ?
As usual, the guild members, all fully online, were talking about duo battlegrounds. The higher the ranking, the fewer points you could gain from a win. In the top-tier brackets, where the rewards changed, the grind was so brutal that it had become a common complaint.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: Just got 70 points per match. So sweet ~_~
[Guild] Furple: Get out, flexer.
[Guild] Oath’s Vow: Blocking you.
[Guild] Shokrates: …70 points? Never even got that high on a test in high school. T_T
[Guild] Freedeal: Damn.
GegulGegulFrog, who had been slacking off the entire season and only started ranked matches yesterday, was now provoking the guild.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: Oh, you guys didn’t hear? The saying’s changed.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: “The early bird gets tired.”
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: If you’d started slow like me, you wouldn’t be suffering~ hehe.
[Guild] Shokrates: I should’ve started late too. T_T
Like in any game, defeating a higher-ranked opponent awarded significantly more points than beating someone of similar rank. Conversely, losing to a lower-ranked opponent resulted in a bigger point deduction.
On top of that, the battlegrounds had a win streak bonus system—consecutive victories granted increasingly higher points.
If early starters steadily climbed the ranks step by step, latecomers could take massive leaps, skipping four or five ranks at a time. As long as they had the damage output to back it up, starting late was actually a major advantage.
That’s why many players deliberately waited a bit after the season started before jumping into 1v1 battlegrounds. With fewer matches played, they could still climb faster.
Of course, veterans and top-rankers didn’t bother with such strategies. They naturally climbed regardless, and most of them were the kind of people who constantly muttered, “Ugh, nothing to do.” So they dived in the moment the season began.
Sa-yoon, who was practically unemployed in-game, had also been playing ranked battlegrounds from the start of the season. The only exception was two seasons ago when his return to college overlapped with the ranking period—he had started late and still reached his usual reward tier with far fewer matches.
Originally, he had planned to take it easy this season too, only ramping up his efforts at the last minute. But with the release of a new battleground, his plans had completely changed.
[Matchmaking Wait Time: 12 minutes 27 seconds]
At this point, matchmaking, which used to be instant, was taking over ten minutes. And even when it did find a match, it was against lower-ranked players, yielding only around 5 or 6 points per win—even with the win streak bonus.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: Am I the only one who gets pissed every time I open the ranking window?
[Guild] Shokrates: Because your rank’s too low?
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: Nah, it’s those Noize bastards. Seeing them in the ranking window ruins my mood. LOL.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: Wanna crush them, but since I started late, I’m not in the same bracket. T_T
[Guild] Freedeal: Oh, I feel that too. LOL.
[Guild] Shokrates: Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen them either. Feels like I should’ve run into them by now.
Sa-yoon took a sip of the energy drink sitting under his monitor and pulled up the ranking window. The first thing his eyes landed on was, of course, the name at the very top. NodeMaster was still holding the #1 spot, completely unmoving.
He hadn’t expected that… Even in the tightly packed rankings, there was nearly a 50-point gap between 1st and 2nd place.
Tilting his head, Sa-yoon typed “NodeMaster” into the search bar.
[This character is currently offline.]
When do they even log in? Every time Sa-yoon checked, NodeMaster was offline. Their duo partner was the same.
Was it even possible for their playtimes to never overlap like this? Clicking his tongue in frustration, Sa-yoon frowned. If he could just go up against the #1, he’d rake in a ton of points.
As he idly scrolled through the rankings, familiar names caught his eye.
RedAlert, GreenLight, BlackPropaganda… Members of the Noize guild that he’d had conflicts with were scattered across the rankings like chocolate chips on a cookie.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: Hey, Guild Master, were those guys always ranked this high?
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: Last time I saw them, they sucked. Their ranking looks super suspicious rn.
Noize guild members were usually slow starters, but it seemed like they had been grinding from the beginning this season.
The rewards must be really good this time. The only surprising thing was that WhiteNoise, who was always the most eager to grind events like this, was nowhere to be seen.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: I feel like we’ll know for sure if we go up against them.
[Guild] Chasa: Hmm.
[Guild] Chasa: They were always rankers, though.
[Guild] GegulGegulFrog: What, did all the rankers on this server quit or something?
[Guild] Chasa: …How did you know?
[Guild] Chasa: There was a time when all the rankers actually quit at once.
Back then, it was still the early days, and server transfer tickets didn’t exist. The only option was to actually quit the game.
Come to think of it, maybe that was why Cygnus had gained its reputation as a backwater server.
