KYB Ch 3

‘God of Water Veil.’

Often shortened to GoWV, this game was, in short, about reclaiming land submerged by evil gods after the benevolent ones had departed. The goal was to defeat cult leaders and apostles—children of the evil gods—by joining forces.

‘Raiding the Apostle boss and the story were actually quite fun.’

It was the number one MMORPG in Korea, to the point that it raised the country’s average PC specs.

Ye Woo-won, too, used to grind up to max level, but recently he had become busier—and truthfully, had forgotten the game due to his cold war with Kim Hee-yeon.

‘Well, I only played when Kim Hee-yeon asked me to anyway.’

Still, the memory stirred a sudden curiosity about the game’s current state.

It had been almost five months since his last login. He vaguely remembered hearing about a new Apostle and a large-scale update.

Before he knew it, Ye Woo-won found himself walking into a PC café, sitting down like he was under a spell.

‘Lots of people here.’

Maybe because of an event, the place was packed.

‘The setup is not bad either.’

He smirked faintly at the sight of himself instinctively launching the game.

— Now we must reclaim the lands we have lost.

The game sound pierced through the background chatter. Ye Woo-won quickly put on his headset and stared at the loading screen he hadn’t seen in months.

When the loading ended, his screen filled with the massive, muscular figure of his character.

His bulging muscles twitched, revealing a solid, well-built body. With every movement of the character, the dragon scales shimmered in and out of view. Vertical, slit-like golden pupils and the faint glimpse of sharp teeth—these were the defining traits that marked Ye Woo-won’s character as a Tank-class ‘Dragon Knight.’

[Yewoo Beomjeol]

The nickname sparkled under the character’s feet as if begging to be clicked.

Ye Woo-won leaned his chin on his hand, tapping his cheek thoughtfully before deciding and pressing it firmly.

The Dragon Knight slammed his greatsword into the ground—and the screen transitioned.

Darkness enveloped him. Bubbles rose through the depths, and a fragment of surviving land was revealed amid solemn music.

— Ding! A familiar notification sound. Ye Woo-won couldn’t help but smile.

A flood of patch notes scrolled across the screen—new costumes, bug fixes, events.

He closed them all and found himself in a crowded village square.

The chat window was overflowing within seconds.

No wonder—it was the hottest MMORPG in the country. Even here, if he perked up his ears, he could hear the sounds of GoWV echoing from different corners of the PC café.

After five months away, Ye Woo-won took in the scene.

A Necromancer riding a scythe, an Elf Mage playing a flute, an Engineer hauling twin cannons, a Vampire dragging a massive shadow, and a tiny Dwarf hopping with a hammer.

‘It’s still the same.’

Seeing it again after so long, all the graphics felt really cute—and kind of fun.

‘Is that the recent fashion trend?’

Sometimes it was fun just watching people in strange outfits, so Ye Woo-won stood in town for a while, quietly observing those passing in front of him. There were lots of new pieces of equipment and unfamiliar NPCs he hadn’t seen before.

‘Where should I start?’

Only a few months had passed, yet everything seemed new.

Ye Woo-won had originally been at the max level, but now that a new Apostle had been released, the level cap must have been raised. That meant there should be new sections available for leveling up.

‘Guess I’ll have to craft new gear.’

Gear was crafted using Apostle drops, but since the drop rate was random, progress varied per player.

Opening the event tab, he scanned through the new Apostle information.

‘Oh, impressive…’

The teaser started with a dramatic cinematic. Just as he was absorbed, the chat window blinked.

But Ye Woo-won didn’t notice.

‘The new Apostle…’

Ye Woo-won was so busy scrolling through the update notes that he didn’t even realize someone had spoken to him in the general chat window.

The newly revealed Apostle from the New Continent was grotesque. It had a long, sinuous body with countless pitch-black legs. Naked corpses hung around its neck like grotesque ornaments, and the gaping mouth split wide open on its towering head formed a chilling, twisted grin.

A deep, grating voice. The sound of grinding metal.

Beneath the eerie illustration of Maestro, whose very appearance exuded gloom, was a neatly arranged list of rewards available upon defeating him.

‘Equipment with new options… and materials for enhancement, huh…’

Fortunately, Yewoo Beomjeol’s level was still high enough to join the Apostle raid immediately.

‘Maybe I’ll try a raid again. I’ll probably need to warm up a bit though…’

He had originally planned to spend the day with Kim Hee-yeon, so he happened to have some free time. Since he didn’t have many friends anyway, playing a game seemed like a better way to pass the time than drinking and talking about the breakup.

Lost in thought, Ye Woo-won didn’t notice that his surroundings had turned into a bustling marketplace.

Seeing the magnificent figure of the Dragon Knight, people gathered around in fascination, each adding their own comments one by one.

It was understandable — in GoWV, most classes had a fairly balanced number of players, but the Dragon Knight was the clear exception.

The “Dragon Knight” that Ye Woo-won played was, in name, a damage-dealing tank — but in reality, it was nothing more than a shield constantly sacrificing itself for the team.

Because of that, having even one Dragon Knight could drastically boost the damage output and stability of the other DPS players.

It was infamous for being hard and unrewarding.

In this game, classes could be changed within the same race. As Mandumangdu said, most Dragon Knights either deleted their character or migrated to Dragon Summoner.

Who would spend money to raise such a Dragon Knight all the way to max level?

Since the class didn’t deliver results worth the effort you put into it, it was rare to see anyone level it up to a high rank.

And even if someone did level one up, they usually grew disillusioned quickly, quit, and created a new account to start over with a different character.

Of course, if a party had a skilled Dragon Knight, the raid’s difficulty would drop dramatically.

However, there were only a handful of players who were actually good at playing the near-trash-tier class like Dragon Knight. A few streamers did play it, but they were rare—and if you weren’t a streamer, there really wasn’t much reason to bother leveling one at all.

Dragon Knight, huh…?

Just then, Ye Woo-won, who happened to be looking at the chat window, slowly parted his lips.

‘That’s my character, isn’t it?’

The class everyone called garbage—that was his.