“That’s a relief.”
The moment Do-Jin answered, the light began to break apart.
Fragments of light scattered upward, twisting the air itself and warping the space above him. The Light of Bella brushed against Do-Jin for a brief instant, then carved out a path so it could gather and focus. Through that path, spanning an absurd distance and tearing through layers of space, Bella’s light poured straight down into him.
[A new quest is being generated.]
***
With the help of a third party, Do-Jin had managed to make contact with Bella. One last obstacle still stood in his way.
[Star-Forged Blade]
Grade: Fate
Objective: Recover the Star-Forged Blade
Reward: Star-Forged Blade
Bella once forged a blade of starlight for her apostle, but it shattered and fell across the world in fragments. As the apostle of the star, you must gather the pieces and restore the blade meant for you.
The quest item, the Star-Forged Blade, was mandatory.
She can’t just shove power straight into me, so this is the workaround.
It was a loophole, a way to slip past the hammer of the Light of the World. Do-Jin moved immediately. Three fragments existed in total, and the Quest window already marked each location. While he fought through the obstacles guarding each piece, the situation outside continued to rot.
Meanwhile, Benga had become the massacre faction’s mouthpiece. He played the role perfectly, like Goebbels clinging to Hitler’s side.
—In the long run, LOST players are going to split into two factions and start killing each other. Large-scale PvP between factions is the next phase of LOST, and our guild will be the starting gun. We’re elite only, and I have no doubt we’ll sit at the top of an entire faction.
Pulled in by his nonstop propaganda, more users started lining up to join the newly founded Ruin Guild. However, they didn’t recruit indiscriminately.
—The guildmaster decided to cap Ruin’s core members at eleven. Anyone who wants to become the foundation of the new faction will eventually be organized into subsidiary groups under a massive guild alliance. Until then, focus on getting stronger.
For a plan built on slaughtering the weak to fatten themselves up, the blueprint was grand in the most disgusting way possible.
└ Can someone please wipe out those middle-school-syndrome dipshits already?
└ What do you want us to do? Nobody knows when or where those fuckers will strike next.
└ Tons of streamers are hunting them nonstop, but nobody’s managed to catch them yet.
└ Am I the only one finding this kind of entertaining? A handful of lunatics are running wild and the whole game’s losing its mind already. If real faction warfare starts, it’s going to be chaos in the best way.
└ Entertaining, my ass. I watched the orphanage raid clip and puked immediately.
└ Let’s stop pretending to be saints. It’s a game. Just a game. They’re killing NPC data, not real people.
└ If LOST NPCs feel like nothing but data to you, your empathy is already fucking dead.
The backlash kept getting louder, but just as many people started saying they wanted to stand on Ruin’s side and “have some fun.” The lines were no longer blurring together but splitting cleanly down the middle. Then, another incident dumped gasoline straight onto the fire.
A group of streamers who had banded together to hunt the murderers tracked down another massacre site. They only pulled it off because obsessive route tracking lined up with dumb luck, and everyone watching knew this was probably their one real shot.
— Finally found you, you fucking animals.
The streamer group had twelve people while the murderers had five, even after counting the new guild recruits.
└ They won’t stop even if you kill them once, but watching them get wiped will still feel good.
└ Looks like the real shitshow’s finally starting.
└ Come on, the streamers act like clowns, but they should roll them easy.
└ Yeah, no shit. Twice the numbers, and they’re dumping insane money into gear. These aren’t broke randos.
Viewers poured in by the tens of thousands. Everyone smelled blood and queued up for popcorn. Eventually, the whole thing went completely sideways, and the fight ended with all five murderers still standing. People who had tuned in hoping to watch a righteous beatdown sat there stunned and pissed.
└ What the fuck was that?
└ Are you kidding me? How has this guy not already famous?
└ Black fire wrapped around the blade, and every swing tore people apart like paper. It was not flashy. It was not dramatic. It was clean, brutal, and over.
└ So even if you find them, you’re just fucked if that’s their power, huh?
The battle barely qualified as a fight. For a few seconds, it looked like the streamers might push
them back. But when the original murderer, the black-robed swordsman, stepped
forward, everything ended in a blink.
└ Holy shit, watching those fake justice streamers eat dirt just made my beer taste better.
└ LMAO yeah, what were they gonna do anyway? Cry harder?
└ All those “for the children” assholes farming donations just got folded like lawn chairs. That
was satisfying as hell.
└ You could smell the grift through the screen. Acting noble while lining their pockets, and now
they’re dead quiet.
The twisted ones latched onto the murderers’ strength like parasites. People who had stayed
quiet before suddenly started acting like that power was theirs too. Confidence that was
never earned bloomed overnight, loud and ugly.
└ What the fuck happened to this game? LOST wasn’t like this before.
Throughout all the chaos, Do-Jin had just finished off a dungeon boss somewhere far away.
[You have acquired the Star-Forged Blade fragment.]
Right as he killed the quest target, the final fragment needed to complete the blade slid into him. The translucent shard of starlight dissolved on contact. The pieces that had once been the blade, guard, and hilt fused inside him, then flared at his fingertips.
[The blade forged from starlight has been fully restored.]
[You have obtained the special-use item ‘Star-Forged Blade.’]
The quest updated immediately.
[Judgment of Starlight]
Grade: Fate
Objective: Banish Regenians who have sided with Laves
Reward: ???
If those who have chosen Ruin are not driven out, the chaos will not end. One must banish them from this world forever.
When Do-Jin closed his hand, the sword sank back into him.
[Special penalty applied due to possession of Star-Forged Blade. If you die while possessing the Star-Forged Blade, your soul will permanently leave this world.]
A cold blue warning window popped up. Do-Jin shut it without hesitation, since he already knew exactly what he was signing up for. Reading the fine print twice would not make it any less ugly.
So it even shows me where they are... those snakes who sold their souls to Laves.
That was all that mattered. Do-Jin ignored everything else and focused on the six glowing red points, each one tethered to him by a thin blue line, like targets already marked for execution.
***
After obtaining the sword, Do-Jin spent roughly three hours preparing before the fight. He started by reviewing everything that had happened so far. While doing that, he picked up on a detail that mattered a hell of a lot more than anything else.
Black flames?
That was the murderer’s ability. The way they wreathed a blade in black fire and used it to cut people down matched a combat style Do-Jin knew all too well.
That’s Decane.
He was a player whose very existence had stayed hidden until the ranking system went live. When the rankings first appeared, Decane had briefly held third place. Then, somehow, his name vanished from the rankings entirely. Later on, plenty of rankers learned how to hide or mask their names, but Decane had been the first bastard to ever pull that off.
Decane never gave a shit about rankings in the first place.
The only thing that ever mattered to him was boosting his own specs. If backstabbing other players during world events helped him do that, he did it without blinking.
And now, that guy’s stirring this much shit, drawing all that attention, and even sharing a quest he barely got his hands on?
Decane would never do something like that unless it benefited him, so Do-Jin guessed the reward structure must be some kind of pyramid scheme. The more people who joined in and killed, the more Decane himself gained at the top.
Doesn’t matter.
At this point, the answer was simple. Weeds, vermin, and diseased animals all worked the same way. Leave them alone, and they grow into disasters. Wipe them out early, and the problem dies with them.
Once his preparations were complete, Do-Jin moved ahead of the killers and took up position at the site of their next massacre. Then he turned on the stream, not because he wanted to continue growing his channel, chase clout, or entertain anyone.
This needs to become an example.
Do-Jin went live to show everyone exactly what happened when a player chose Ruin’s side. He would be the executioner himself. He would show the world what became of those who tried to drag it toward destruction, only to end up with their heads lopped off for it.
Do-Jin slowed his breathing as he watched the red dots closing in.
***
“Holy shit. This EXP gain is fucking insane,” a new recruit muttered in awe.
Benga burst out laughing. “Right? I damn near shit myself the first time too. You really lucked out. That guild sponsorship fee is absolutely worth it.”
“Yeah. No kidding.”
Decane and Benga charged a massive “donation” every time they accepted a new guild member. Converted to real money, it came out just shy of five hundred million won per head.
“For just five hundred million, this kind of hidden quest is a steal.”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.”
Benga nodded along, then let out a regretful breath.
The money was great, but what really frustrated him was how slowly they’d been expanding. He wanted to grow the guild fast, but the quest mechanics put a hard cap on things. Power accumulated through slaughter flowed into Decane first, then was redistributed. That bottleneck meant they could not just shovel in new members nonstop.
Still, once the numbers creep up, the killing will ramp up too. When that happens, the growth curve will spike. I’m done living like some mid-tier streamer nobody remembers.
Drunk on that fantasy, Benga walked up to Decane and asked, “We’re getting close to the next target. You think it’s fine to go live again?”
Decane’s group never stopped broadcasting their massacres. The more brutal the footage, the faster their fanbase grew, and the louder their supporters became. Although there was some backlash, nobody in their party cared.
“Even if we start streaming now, nobody’s close enough to interfere,” Benga reasoned. “And if someone does show up, we just kill them too. Simple.”
Decane snorted and nodded. “Figures. Turn it on, then.”
As he watched Benga and the others treat him like a king, a cheap sense of superiority spread through Decane’s chest. He turned his gaze toward the village ahead, a place where sick and broken people scraped by.
How much power will I rack up today? If I’m lucky, maybe enough to pick up another follower.
That was when a flash of light ripped through the air.
What th—
The head of that newly recruited guild member beside him exploded in a wet burst. The guy who had been talking about how five hundred million was nothing just seconds earlier dropped without a sound, unable to even finish his thought.
At the same time, red and blue energies slammed together around them, weaving into a dome like oil and water violently refusing to mix.
[Quest Zone has been established.]
A quest window snapped open in front of Decane and his group. The objective ordered them to kill Bella’s loathsome slave.
“Hey, wait. What the fuck is this? Permanent banishment? What kind of bullshit is that?”
The quest window displayed the same penalty Do-Jin carried. Whether they panicked or not didn’t matter. The situation kept moving.
“Quit whining like idiots and get ready!”
Decane barked the order as a massive surge of golden mana tore through the distance toward them at terrifying speed.
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