The day was finally coming to an end. Min-jae had been working for nine hours straight with no break with Jun-ho barking at him from one side, and Dae-hyun asking questions from the other side.
Thankfully, with Dae-hyun starting, it caused a massive shift and everyone had all their projects reorganised, removed and delegated elsewhere. This means that Min-jae's workload has miraculously improved and is at least somewhat workable. He was in a slightly better mood, but he still felt like he was working so hard that steam was coming out of him.
It was just after six in the evening, and nobody had gone home yet. The major winter titles were expected to be released by the end of the week so stress was high and tension was thick.
Min-jae's stomach hurt and protested loudly. He pressed a hand against his stomach to silence its cries.
"I suppose we should call it a day," Jun-ho finally broke the silence. "Have you finished making the changes to the databases?"
Ah, shit. He'd completely forgotten. He froze, suddenly no longer hungry.
"N-No, I'll get to that now."
Jun-ho sighed. "Seriously? How long have you been working here? Yet you still don't know you need to log the edits in the database every after every single change. How else are we going to know what's been completed?"
Min-jae was silent, he didn't really know what to say. He shuffled and pushed his chestnut brown hair out of his eyes, twirling it in his fingers for a moment.
"No, I guess we'll keep working then. I swear, I don't understand how you can just mess up so often."
He wanted to cry.
Making changes was a couple of hours of mindless admin work that he really didn't want to do. He couldn't even remember what he had to log, all the work thrown his way knocked him off balance and screwed up the process.
"I'm leaving now. Goodbye, everyone." Dae-hyun stood up and exhaled in relief. He cracked his knuckles for some to relieve the stiffness in his body, then walked past Min-jae. "Min, I'm going for some fried chicken, are you coming?"
Jun-ho's eyes narrowed as he heard the whispering and saw Min-jae trying to shake his head, but an arm looped under one of his to try to scoop him out of his seat.
Jun-ho's hand was strong and firm as it arm around Min-jae's skinny arm to contest Dae-hyun's hold on him. Their gazes were level, and Jun-ho's warning expression spoke louder than words.
"He's not done yet," was all he said to make Dae-hyun let go of him. He wasn't about to contest his colleague, whose eyes were sharp like daggers. It reminded him of a dragon, one that Dae-hyun was intent on taming.
So, he let go. Then raised his arms defensively. "You can't keep him trapped here forever," he commented, jokingly. "One day I'll save the princess," he aimed that one at Min-jae.
Dae-hyun had already left, along with a couple of others in the building. Min-jae was typing up a storm, trying to get through data entry as quickly as he could. There was an event tonight in Eclipse Online to give him more EXP. Certain characters on his keyboard were starting to wear off and the incentive to home quickly must've increased his WPM to 120, he was sweating.
And then hit the end of the page, finally! He turned towards his supervisor with a cheerful glisten in his eyes. "Boss–"
"Go home, then." It was almost like he knew he was done. Jun-ho didn't bother to shower him any sort of recognition or gratitude like he was secretly expecting. He just waved him off and continued to do his own work. "I'll review your work, I assume it's all up to scratch with no mistakes?"
He wasn't sure, but he wanted out. He'll deal with the consequences earlier. Besides, it's not like data entry was exactly difficult.
Min-jae gave a polite bow. "Have a good evening, see you tomorrow." Then grabbed his belongings and left.
As the door closed behind him, it was just Jun-ho left in the office alone. He'd been watching Min-jae click and clack desperately on the computer as if he were running out of time. He could see the mistakes being made and kept a mental note of what was wrong so he could fix it later. He had something to attend to, so he wasn't going to bother to keep Min-jae back for another lashing. He'd just pull another all-nighter to compensate for it.
Jun-ho ran a hand through his silky black hair and glanced at the time. He picked up the documents his subordinate had been working on today and packed a laptop to work from home later tonight.
His white shirt had already crumpled from the long day, and his tie was loosened. Despite the cold weather, he didn't get cold easily so frequently felt like he was overheating in his tight professional outfit.
…
Min-jae finally arrived home and immediately dropped all of his belongings, loosened his tie and shirt then went to log into Eclipse Online. But stopped in his tracks when his stomach gave out with a pained howl.
While he waited for his PC to turn on, he quickly started to heat up a ready meal he bought the previous night. It had rice, vegetables and chicken drizzled in a light sweet and sour sauce with sesame seeds on top. Well, only a couple, they really skimped on the seeds and chicken.
Ping
He ignored the noise.
Ping ping.
Ping… pingpingpingpingpingpingpingping
Oh he knew who that was.
He grabbed his phone that was violently vibrating, and a pissed off scowl scarred his face while reading the notifications. Opening it up were several spam messages reading something similar to
"Hello?" and "Respond!" also followed with variations "plzplzplzplz" – and the person doing this? Well, it was actually two of them, and it happened to be Kim Eun-woo and Kang Yu-jun.
Before the barrage of countless begging messages, they were asking him if he had thought about coming back to the game and if they'd play with him. Since the whole Yunnie and Eunnie incident, they thought about creating new characters but levelling them up didn't interest them. However, with this EXP event, they were suddenly interested again.
"Go away." He responded back to them.
Min-jae was invited to a group chat
Eun-woo changed the group name to Plzplaywithmehyung
Yu-jun changed the group picture to – and it was a picture of KeuMinMin, Min-jae's old and now deleted character.
Min-jae sighed. He called the group chat and both of them immediately picked up, feigning cries down their phones.
"You've been ignoring us for so long~" One of the voices howled.
"I missed you, please come back, we're sorry!" Another voice came through. He's barely exchanged messages with them since the incident, but that was mostly out of his own shame and embarrassment.
Besides, he did actually like those two and as long as they didn't hate him, he supposed he could give it a shot. They could keep his secret, right?
He pinched the bridge of his nose at the two idiots on the other side of the line. "If I had a new character, could you two keep it a secret?"
"Of course!" They chanted in unison.
"No, I really mean it. You can't tell anyone I'm," he cut himself off. "I was KeuMinMin. And no telling people that 'KeuMinMin is back and playing the game again' or saying anything on the forums. I don't want to go through that again."
There was a moment of silence before Eunnie spoke up. "Don't sweat it, we won't say anything. What's your name?"
Min-jae continued the discussion and gave out his name. He logged back in and finished his ready meal. He put the phone down a few minutes ago and saw friend requests pop up.
'Looks like they tried to start levelling already.'
He popped open a can of soft drink, one of a generic, cheap brand with a label of Mr.Cup. Then took a sip and opened up the friend request menu. Two names appeared among a list of what looked like spam requests from level 1s with random strings of three letter character names.
These requests were from two characters who were around level 20, one with the name of Angrcat and another one named Angrdog. Looks like they're at it again with the matching names.
He accepted their friend requests and went to add them to the party, when he saw another person online, W0nderjunjun. Oh, he's back! But… he did promise to play with his friends and he didn't want to risk them blurting out his name.
[Whisper] Angrcat: Are you going to get on EclypseLink?
He uninstalled it some time ago, Min-jae didn't want the notifications to leak through. He responded and explained that he'd uninstalled it but immediately got sent a link to download it.
'Oh well,' he thought and downloaded it again. He went through the standard process of signing up as a new user, downloading, installing, signing in and adding his friends. Their tags weren't difficult to remember, they used the Eunnie/Yunnie tags from when they tried to catfish people before.
Once added, he was immediately invited to their chatroom.
"Good evening," he said as he joined the chat.
"Good evening," Yu-jun mocked.
"Shall we start with the Crown City dungeon on master difficulty, fellow team members?" Eun-woo also mocked his serious and formal tone.
Min-jae brushed it off and responded. "Actually, did you guys hear about that new PvP/PvE mix wilderness zone? You get more EXP from running a few dungeons there."
[Whisper] W0nderjunjun: Hey, sorry I haven't been on in a while. Do you want to run some dungeons for the EXP event?
Min-jae didn't see the message and his chat notifications were muted. Their party crossed over to the town nearby so they could stock up on consumables.
Ten minutes passed…
[Whisper] W0nderjunjun: You there?
Another message Min-jae didn't see.
"I gotta pee, back soon." His group members agreed to take a quick bathroom break before they crossed over to the wilderness.
Out of habit, boredom and probably a bit of something else, Min-jae walked around the town in loops. The same circle motion: he started in the town square and moved clockwise, first around the blacksmith, then around the trading house, then up the castle wall, then down the castle wall on the other side, then back to the fountain in the town square.
After his fourth loop, a sleek, black trenchcoat blocked the way. An elf assassin had just appeared out of stealth in front of him.
W0nderjunjun: Are you ignoring me? :(
This time he spoke in the general chat, where everyone could see this, but it physically pops up on screen in a little speech bubble above his character's head.
Min-jae was shocked! He felt a little bit bad, but quickly scrolled up his chat to see several messages from his online friend had gone unanswered.
2MinHae: I'm sorry!
He quickly typed that out, he didn't want to think he was ignoring him.
2MinHae: I'm playing with my friends right now, I haven't seen them in a while. Maybe tomorrow?
As soon as he typed that, his friends returned. Flooding into his screen were Angrdog and Angrcat, coming to scope out the competition and get involved with Min-jae and his new friend.
"Aww, this guy's just level 23. Let's invite him!" That was Eun-woo.
"Dude, get lost. You think I'm letting you talk to my other friends?"
"Other friends? Aw you hurt me I thought we were the only ones!" Yu-jun feigned hurt.
W0nderjunjun: Are these guys your friends?
Angrdog: Yes, are you trying to take away our minhae?
2MinHae: I don't know who these people are.
They both typed that at the same time, but it was just as much of a surprise to both of them.
Angrcat: So cruel :(
W0nderjunjun took a quick look at their gear, it was obvious these guys were alt accounts. Both of them had level scaling and fully enchanted gear at +15. This can only be achieved by completing the current main raid of the expansion on the highest difficulty and can be traded between characters.
W0nderjunjun: No problem. See you later.
Min-jae felt bad when he saw W0nderjunjun immediately log out. He couldn't say anything back to him, and even tried to invite him to the party but the option was greyed out as his character left the world.
He was guilty, but sent an in-game mail to the guy for when he logged back on. It wrote:
"I'm sorry about that! Let me know when you want to play again.
-2MinHae"
Once he sent that, he was swiftly dragged off to the Plains of Denock to start running quests and dungeons. Even though he had work tomorrow, he intended on staying up late to catch up on EXP and start running PvP again. After all, he can always catch up on sleep later. This event won't last forever.
They were slaying enemies left and right. As hordes poured through from all sides, sometimes even including enemy players, they were able to easily behead and knock anything down with ease.
Angrcat was a healer with maxed out gear, he played the Cleric class which means he dealt extra damage to undead monsters, which just so happened to be the majority of monsters in the wilderness.
Angrdog was a tank, he played the Demon race, and had a long tail with a pointy tip, pointy ears and horns that protruded through the top of his skull. As a warrior tank, his entire body was his weapon – in addition to his sword.
Min-jae found it funny that so many players tried to attack them, thinking they're newbies.
"Seems that everyone's on alts today," Min-jae commented, casually.
"Yeah, they keep trying to kill us for EXP," Yu-jun laughed. They expected them to trash players, so when enemy players got absolutely trashed, they'd come back for round two shortly after. Trying to get revenge.
One of the dungeons they entered was part of a side-quest they picked up from the town. They needed to descend to floor 10 to defeat a demon king and save some trapped villagers. Standard side-quest, really.
The dungeon was quite aesthetically pleasing for something based around the standard description of hell: flickering flames; blistering pools of lava; prisons built into the walls with monsters, humans, demons and corpses inside. They weren't part of the quest, but more to build immersion as if they were really entering hell to kill the demon king.
Starting at floor 0, they moved quickly and rapidly further down the dungeon until they reached floor 5, the interim floor. Normally, these floors have mini-bosses in. However as they entered, they were all on guard and cautious, yet confused since nothing was waiting for him there.
"There's nothing here?" Eun-woo questioned.
The party moved onto the middle of the floor. It was a small room, with stairs very obvious and very visible. While it looked like a trap, nothing else was around.
Then it hit him.