Not only am I a handsome guy, but I’m also a crazy talented gamer?!

Episode 4

“We’re patching ahead of a month-long event.

We apologize for the suddenness of this patch. We’re very sorry that we’re going to be unavailable today as we evolve Middle Earth (ME) to meet the requirements of the event.

What’s new in version 1.01?

Added a new monster, the Vampire.

-Vampires are the most powerful of the dark monsters. There are nine clans, each of which has a large castle. These castles can teleport to each other and are spread throughout the Empire.

The lowest level vampire is level 90, and the Blood Emperor, the ruler of the vampires, is level 300, surpassing the Two-Master.

1,000 new quests added.

-For more information, see the Quest Board.

Created the Continent of Seals.

-See the Map Board for details.”

“Hmm, I’m off today!

Today’s patch saved me from a six-hour grind. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the shooting range.

“Should I invite my friends?

I missed my friends for a long time, but I preferred to shoot alone, so I decided to invite them over for dinner later, and called Cur, the A.I. that manages and runs the whole house.

“Cur? Send a message to Yoon Byung-gu and Hong-gu. Tonight at 7 pm, I’ll make you a delicious dinner at home.”

-Okay.

A gentle Mi-sung replied. Yun Byung-gu and Hong-gu are two friends who may not have a lot of talent, but they have lively personalities. They also went to gymnastics together. They were athletic friends who won awards in all kinds of competitions, even if they didn’t win gold medals like me.

Bang, bang, bang!

My skills didn’t diminish at all. In fact, I felt like I got a little sharper. I walked off the range in good spirits.

“Now, should I go get something to eat?

We had dinner plans. Pekingese and Honggu were quite picky eaters. They wouldn’t eat anything that didn’t live up to their appearance. They were a pain in the ass in many ways. They ate a lot, but they were also gluttonous.

“What should I cook?

Several things popped into my head. Pasta, kimchi stew, tteokbokki… As I rattled off the dishes I knew how to make, I realized I hadn’t invited my friends over.

“They’ll just go to sleep.

My friends would never eat bad food, and if I invited them over and served them something bad, I would be buried alive by the best tactic in the world.

‘I’ll order something expensive…….’

I grabbed a drink and some appetizers and headed home.

It was a little after five when I arrived home.

“Curry. Seven bowls of fried rice and four large bowls of hot and sour pork.”

-Okay.

These guys were foodies, but gluttons. They were ignorant bastards who swallowed whatever they were given until they vomited. They weren’t fat, just big; they were both over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, and they couldn’t have been more suited to overpowering men.

They were like twins, they did everything together, they were the same size, they had the same interests and the same sports, and they were both boxers. They were the best of the best, and I was the second best. We were a crazy trio that was well-received in college, and I remember going to college like it was yesterday.

We paid a lot of money for a good meal, so Byung-gu and Hong-gu wouldn’t complain.

My friends arrived at exactly 7:00. I put all the fried rice and hot and sour soup on the floor; there was no way I could put it all on the table, but they sat on the floor and watched TV and ate just fine.

Another thing they have in common is that they never talk while eating. If I even tried to talk to them, I was met with a lifeless stare. I actually thought I might die.

“What are you doing? You’re eating.”

Hong Gu, a man with a distinctive personality who drinks from the corner of his mouth, asked. Hong Gu’s face was always flushed red, a sign of his fiery temper and quick temper.

“I just want to see you guys.”

“Tsk… It’s time to die.”

Hong Gu gave me a pin glass. He was a good jokester, and surprisingly, unlike Byung-gu, his brain worked better than the criminals. Byung-gu is supposedly made of bone, even his brain, but…….

“What do you mean?”

I understood roughly, but it was too much for Byung-gu.

“I heard that when it’s time to die, you do things you wouldn’t normally do, and you suddenly miss people you didn’t want to see…….”

“Kahahahaha!”

As always, Byung-gu understood a beat late and laughed a beat late. I smiled bitterly and ate my snacks. I didn’t drink alcohol because I hated it, but my friends were big drinkers, so I bought it for them.

As we chatted, they gave me a tour of my home.

“You live in a surprisingly clean place,” he said, “You used to always clean it.”

Honggu was surprisingly dull. Nowadays, I have a robot vacuum cleaner so I don’t have to.

“Well, they live in an old building. Maybe they don’t know.

I wanted to show off rather than tell the truth.

“Of course they do. I’m a nerd, too. Who do you think lives in such a dirty place?”

Byung-gu and Hong-gu looked around the house in disbelief. It was obvious that they were looking for dust. But it would be hard.

“You bastard, if I find even a speck of dust, I’ll bury you alive……!

The two of them were furious.

“There’s no way there’s dust, it’s a state-of-the-art machine.

“Uh! Isn’t this the latest capsule?”

Hong-gu, who had been rummaging around the house for a while, asked. Being a gamer, he could tell if it was state-of-the-art or not at a glance. Byung-gu was also surprised and came into the room with the capsule.

“That’s right. I bought it.”

“This is a comprehensive package capsule! Do you play Middle-earth?”

Middle-earth is a very famous game, so there was no way Hong and Byung-gu didn’t know about it.

“I started playing it two days ago, Choreb. Do you guys play it too?”

I asked, and Hong-gu said that he was currently raising a high-level wizard, and Byung-gu said that he hadn’t started yet, but that Hong-gu had gotten him hooked and would start soon.

Unfortunately, Honggu was an elf. Since he started on an elven server, he couldn’t meet me, and he was disappointed.

“Since I’ve only just raised him, you should come back to our server.”

“Well, I like the humans… and there’s a human server event coming up soon, so I’m going to join the human server at …….”

“Oh, that’s too bad, but I can’t help it.”

Hong-gu’s expression was puzzled, but we shrugged it off and continued drinking, catching up with our friends. I never thought I could relieve boredom in a game.

In many ways, Middle-earth was a pain in the ass.

Before I knew it, the clock struck 10, and I sent my friends on their way, laid down on my bed, and tried to sleep.

“Mmmm~.”

My body refused to listen. I realized that yesterday’s four hours of shooting was somehow too much. I usually exercise a lot, but suddenly I had no energy left.

I looked at the time and realized it was still 2 am. I couldn’t sleep, so I got into the capsule and put on my headset.

-Do you want to connect?

“Yes.”

-Measuring your iris and brain waves. Would you like to start with the human examination character “Karen” at level 5?

“Yes.”

After connecting and before entering the game, a window popped up with an announcement about the patch.

“The patch has been fully implemented.

Vampires have been newly activated. Vampires are high-level monsters that only come out at night, and are located in nine castles for each clan, where you can find many of them.

During the day, Vampires’ castles are closed, and those who are there are forced to leave the castle. During the day, Vampires sleep.

Today marks the start of a month-long event on the Human Servers. Today’s event is the Half-Dragon, and the player who levels up the most during the month will receive the flesh of the Half-Dragon. The Half Dragon’s stats and skills are secret.

It’s not a prize for the highest leveled user, it’s purely a reward for the highest level gained during the month.

Have a good time.

-Operator Game Master-”

* * *

It was night outside the cave. The time showed that the sun would be rising soon. There was an unfortunate full moon tonight.

Ughhhhhhhhhhh!

I looked down and saw sharp-fanged werewolves crying. A full moon. Bad luck.

‘If I fall, will I die here?

It was about 20 meters high. It would be impossible to climb up to the beginner’s plain on the cliff, and I’d probably die on the ground below… If I respawned from there, I’d have to dodge the werewolf hordes and make my way back to the beginner’s village.

Respawn. It’s really hard to understand. In the Beginner Town, you respawn right where you die. However, in the more advanced towns, there is a separate respawn area. However, during quests, you are reborn from the spot where you died.

“I’ll wait until daylight.

If I fell, I would almost certainly die instantly, but I had to think about what if. Maybe I’d survive, and the last thing I wanted was to be torn apart by werewolves.

The sky grew brighter and brighter. A sign of sunrise. The werewolves began to disperse, one by one. I took a deep breath and jumped down to pray for escape from the cave.

Suddenly, a huge black cloud appeared in the sky, moving at high speed towards my cave. I squinted a bit and took a closer look and realized it was a swarm of bats, flying across the sky at a very high speed.

“Yikes, let’s jump!”

I didn’t know why I wanted to jump, but the approaching bats were somehow intimidating. There seemed to be at least a thousand of them. The moment I lifted myself up with the intention of jumping, the bats rushed into the cave.

Before I could get off, I was swept up in a swarm of bats and rolled back down the cave I’d struggled out of.

I tried to pull myself up, but the bats kept digging in, pushing me backward… and backward… and backward, until I was rolling downhill.

My HP was also dropping. Probably from the impact of the roll, I fell, first downward, then vertically for about five minutes. I never realized how good it is to feel so little pain. If I felt even 30% of the pain I should have felt, I would have wanted to die.

“Black, black, black, I worked so hard to get up here…….”

Now my body wasn’t listening. It was just pushing and pushing and pushing.

Thud.

I fell vertically and eventually hit the floor. It wasn’t a shock, but I looked at my HP and saw that I had less than 30% left.

‘Please don’t let this happen…….’

Now I was praying for death. I knew I had to go down a bit more to get to the ‘gates of hell’, but I knew I was going to die before then, which I was praying for because of the settings. I kept rolling and falling. I still couldn’t stop because of the swarm of bats, and the descent wasn’t over.

“Shit.

Eventually, I passed out. The blood was a sign that I was running out.

I waited to die, but a notification popped up in front of me, crushing my hopes.

“Stun duration 3 minutes.”