Lee Jaeha, a 22 year old university student. Hobbies? None... Actually- he has one; he likes uploading covers through an anonymous alias online. He's gained quite a good amount of loyal fans too. But he'll never tell anyone about it. He'd rather burn in hell.
Well he did tell a few of his friends..
A few months ago, he got a message from one of those friends.
He was little depressed at that time and his follower count has been stagnant for a while. It was probably because he took a short break from uploading.
He would try to upload something if it wasn't for his hoarse throat.
He opened the text and it read, "do something else for a while y'know, take your mind off things."
His friend then sent a link to a game website. "Maybe you'll get another hobby other than yelling into your mic" he said.
Gaining a gaming addiction isn't exactly a good "hobby" either...
But he'll give it a shot.
As soon as the screen loaded he pressed the play button and was redirected into the character creation screen.
This was tricky... should he make it look like his mascot...?
For thumbnails and such, he ended up designing a mascot for his cover channel. It was a red haired male, with dull cyan eyes and star shaped highlights. His voice was considered energetic so it made sense for his mascot to look as energetic right?
Isn't he all set with his character then? No, designing your avatar after your mascot is boring. Everyone does that already.
But this was only because they didn't have his mascot's hair... accuracy is very important.
He decided on something simple. There weren't really much choices at the start. Usually there was a cosmetic shop where he could buy more later on.
He picked hairstyle where the bangs were parted on the side, it was the most decent looking one of the bunch. He settled on brown hair and green eyes.
Simple, but it looked good.
Next was class. He started going on the forum, searching for the easiest class for beginners.
As expected that wasn't any help. Each blog had different opinions on which class deemed as the easiest.
One said being a swordsman was the easiest since it's the most basic one, easier to learn. Boring.
Another suggested Brawler because you could deal bigger damage at the start than most classes, that is.. only at the start.
Some others mentioned being a Saint because the lack of attack power could be made up for since Saints were number 1 in getting recruited to parties. Meaning you could just sit back and let everyone do the fighting for you, princess treatment or whatever they call it.
He was tempted, but for some reason it didn't pop up on the selection screen...
There were more clashing opinions but he was too tired to read more.
Lee Jaeha sighed and he clicked away from that tab and went back to the game. He scrolled down and read each description once more.
After another 10 minutes of reading, he picked swordsman.
Rather than class selection he realized this was just weapon selection. According to the forum, you could buy and upgrade skills in the town's library.
Each class skill set had weapons it was compatible with.
Ninjas with dual blades, Mage with staffs and magic devices, Brawlers with axes and knuckles, etc.
Class selection didn't really limit your weapon choices either, some skills sets didn't require a specific weapon.
He just hopes "buying" doesn't mean spending real money just for a hefty bunch of skills...
He did have a class in mind, as expected he had to play that role no matter what.
Next was his username. He didn't really give it much thought and just slammed on his keyboard.
Now he could proceed onto the game, fucking finally!!
His character spawned on the area of the beginner's quest. This was where he'd get introduced to all the basics; controls, how to use skills, UI navigation, inventory, etc.
He basically just skimmed through the whole quest and started leveling up fast. This was easy, he used to be an MMORPG addict when he was in middle school.
Ahh...the days where he frequented on PC cafes just to grind for a rare item were coming back to him. Those days were fun, life wasn't so serious back then.
The story was generic; you were the so called chosen hero blessed by the goddess to save the town from the hands of the evil organization, blah blah unimportant stuff.
He reached level 30 and was about to proceed to the next area when he saw it... in the meadow area, there stood a player. Red hair, dull cyan eyes, star shaped highlights. They wore a casual outfit; a black and red tracksuit and a katana dangling on the side of their waist.
Player name,
Was this an impersonator? Why would someone impersonate a nobody singer though? Jaeha wondered. But he was somewhat flattered, this is a sign he's become famous enough for impersonators.
Or...it could be just a fan.
He approached the player, they seemed to be afk since they weren't moving at all.
He had to say though...the cosmetics they used were incredibly accurate to his mascot. He stayed there for a while admiring the impersonator's avatar. It must've cost quite a lot, the eyes and all the other features looked so much higher in quality compared his. He didn't see these in the cosmetic shop either when he visited.
How did they get it? Maybe it was though a limited time event, or through in-app purchases. Still he admires their commitment to making the mascot accurate, they have his respect.
"Should I add this guy?"
Jaeha muttered to himself. He wanted to see how well this impersonator was at impersonating him.
As a singer he barely showed his personality online, only through a few indirect tweets and some interactions with his online friends. He even kept his age and birthday a secret.
It's not like it was compulsory to show information like that, though it did annoy some fans.
Lee Jaeha opened the player profile of
He moved the mouse closer to confirm. He was sweating, his hands shook with every slight movement. Why was this so hard..?
Adding a random stranger online took so much courage, for him atleast. He slapped himself, steeling himself for what he was about to do.
He spent a whole 5 minutes like that, until finally... He closed the player profile and continued his main quest like nothing happened.
Who was he kidding... He didn't play games to socialize, the gameplay's what it's all about!
But as he progressed more, he would run into the imposter more often. Were they stalking him? It can't be a coincidence. Maybe they found out the real deal is playing the game and now they want to get rid of him?!
But the imposter didn't seem interested in him at all... maybe he was just imagining things.
He reached around level 89, the level most players quit. So far the game has been nothing but entertaining for him. The story wasn't actually too bad, and the gameplay was actually fun.
He even finally bought the skill set for his desired class, a tank. It cost him 10000 gold for the first set of skills of the tank class.
All was well...Until he got wrecked by the main quest's boss that is.
It was strange, he clearly had the right level requirements and his equipment was strong enough to beat monsters 10 levels higher than him...SO WHY WAS A MERE LEVEL 90 WOLF BOSS SO HARD TO BEAT??!!!!
Even for a tank like him, he could barely hold out on the 1st phase. Constantly eating shit and having to revive himself, at this point he was gonna run out of healing and revival items.
Maybe he should've grabbed a healing skill while he was at it...
He desperate scrolled through the forum for anything.
[The reason why most newbies rage quit is because of this stupid boss, seriously why don't the devs fix this? At the point I wonder if it's a bug, or they're just sadists. It would be easy if I could just ask a veteran player to carry me, but the Main Quest are strictly solo and it pisses me off]
[ ckAnon: lololol op is right, the devs are really sadistic. The morality rate is too high.]
[ Beansprout: only crazy people actually finish the main quest... I only farm to level up now.]
[ Kekek: is that possible?? Lolol]
[ Beansprout: it's more tedious since the MQ gives a shit ton of exp, but you can still level up pretty fast since there's new events with exp boost.
Even if you come back when you're 200 levels higher the game auto adjusts the difficulty to match yours. The devs are basically calling our inability to defeat this mf a skill issue.]
[ Kekek: isn't the boss after that even harder??]
[ Beansprout: this is exactly why 70% of LOR players quit.. farming forever gets tiring. ]
Ah so that's why.... He understood it now. The developers made their game so easy at first, them suddenly dropped the bomb and made it almost impossible to play. Only maniacs were persistent enough to keep fighting that stupid boss.
Fighting that thing was impossible. That boss had a total of 3 phases; the first one it would throw slashes in the air. If you were hit by one, you'd have the
At the second phase it would roar wildly and grow more tails, each tail would attack you. While you had to dodge the series of slash attacks.
Seems simple right? But no... the attacks were many and stupidly fast, one wrong step and half of your HP would be gone; combined by the
The third phase? Barely anyone knows what happens. They usually die before they can even study the attack patterns.
Once you defeat a quest boss, they usually become a world boss that you can fight with other players. But once it becomes a world boss, it's level raises up by 10, not to mention the additional higher levels for bosses. Ahhh he was seriously gonna kill someone now...this was really stupid, such a stupid boss.
It's not like the main quest and the world bosses were all there was to LOR. There was PVP, dungeon raids, guilds, etc. other less headache inducing things.
He scrolled down the forum once more when he saw a familiar name... There was a video attached to the post.
It was dated a while back.