Dirty Blood

Fifty minutes after the [Dirty Blood] incident occurred, a notice was posted on Deron’s homepage.

[Emergency Maintenance Notice]

Hello. This is Deron Online.

An emergency temporary game service maintenance will be conducted from February 19 (Sun) 23:00 to 24:00 for 1 hour.

[Maintenance Details]

Emergency maintenance to fix the Dirty Blood skill and the Imp Summon skill of the Hell Priest job.

[Important Notes]

The game service will not be available during the maintenance, and the maintenance may end early.

I nodded as I read the notice.

The notice everyone had been waiting for was finally up. I didn’t know what the admins had been doing for the past 50 minutes, but at least they were showing that they were trying to fix the situation.

At 11 PM, as the time stated in the notice approached, the game server went down.

I got out of the capsule and picked up my phone.

The guild chat room was buzzing with talk about the Dirty Blood incident.

It wasn’t just the guild chat room. Other community sites were also buzzing with various opinions about the incident.

I was already sick of looking at the Deron Gallery. I shook my head and started looking elsewhere.

It was only a short 50 minutes, but the incident was getting an excessive amount of attention.

This was mainly due to the overseas users using the global server.

The streamer who had shown the incident directly through their personal broadcast was continuing to explain the situation, albeit roughly, in broken English.

Not only that, but even overseas streamers who were broadcasting Deron’s global server were scouring various Korean community sites to examine the incident.

The streamer I was watching was also skimming through the popular posts on the Deron Gallery.

Of course, they couldn’t read Korean, so they were using a translator.

[Blood Master? so cute…]

The Westerner’s characteristic twangy pronunciation was unpleasant to listen to.

They were looking at my screenshot that was posted in the popular posts.

They had clearly come to the community site to investigate the Dirty Blood situation, but their purpose had changed in the meantime.

They quickly skimmed through the popular posts and started scraping only the screenshots of a specific user.

All of them were screenshots of me.

I frowned and left the broadcast.

While searching for broadcasts like that, I was able to find a relatively normal streamer.

[Ah. If you change the way you look at this situation a little, it’s kind of interesting, you know?]

-What’s so interesting?

-It’s just a bug.

-lol fr

[If you look here now, you can see how users tried to solve this situation.]

The streamer said that and started showing the short materials they had collected.

Most of it was scraped from the popular posts on the Deron Gallery.

Stories of users with the Priest job constantly casting heals to prevent other users from dying, or users deliberately infecting others with Dirty Blood. The streamer summarized various types of situations briefly and concisely.

[Look. It’s similar to a real-world event, right? When Corona broke out last time, news similar to this came out.]

-It’s just a game, why are you so concerned?

-lololol this dude’s getting too invested again.

-So, are you saying that games and reality are the same?

[No, that’s not what I mean, I’m just saying it’s somewhat similar. Wouldn’t it be helpful to collect data like this?]

-Stop talking nonsense and just stream.

-Kim-ssi, play VRS ㅋㅋㅋ

-Okay, just do what you were doing ㅋㅋㅋ

[Ah… Okay…]

The streamer expressed a fairly sharp opinion, but the viewers were not on their side.

They had come to watch VRS gameplay, not to hear an explanation about a plague bug that had broken out in another game.

I was watching the broadcast when…

Knock knock-

I heard a knock from beyond the door.

A careful and delicate knock. It was definitely Mom.

If it were Harang, he would have banged on the door roughly.

[Hayun-ah?]

“Yes?”

[I bought sushi, do you want some?]

“Su, sushi…!”

Buying sushi at this late hour.

I smacked my lips and got out of bed.

***

I ate the sushi that Mom bought and fell asleep.

Without checking whether the bug situation had been resolved.

I was able to find out how the incident ended when I came to school the next day.

After the maintenance, the Dirty Blood bug was completely suppressed.

The Imps that the Hell Priest dragged around were completely changed to invincible status, and Dirty Blood was also changed to a status that would not infect other users.

“Hayun-ah.”

It was Sohee’s voice.

I only slightly raised my head and gave her a nod.

Actually, our eyes didn’t meet. My gaze just happened to land on Sohee’s chest.

It was a chest that boasted a considerable size, no matter how many times I saw it.

“Eung…”

“Are you looking at your phone again?”

“Yeah.”

Even at school, my mind was still focused on Deron.

To be honest, I was curious. I was curious about how this incident was being handled, and time flew by just checking the constantly updated popular posts on the Deron Gallery.

At the time of the incident, it was an incident that did not receive much attention outside of Deron’s community.

However, a post summarizing the incident in an easy-to-read format spread to other humor sites, attracting the attention of many people.

“They say the bug has been fixed. Wouldn’t that make the Pest raid easier?”

“Eum…”

“Look here, everyone seems to be interested in this incident. An article has been posted on an overseas webzine.”

“Eum…”

Sohee’s voice was slightly subdued.

Only then did I raise my head and look at her.

It seemed that she didn’t like me talking about games even at school.

“Have I been talking too much about games…?”

“Yeah. You have.”

“Sorry…”

“But it’s okay.”

“Really? Is it okay if I talk more?”

“That’s not okay.”

In the end, I had no choice but to shut my mouth.

To be honest, I lacked topics to talk about with Sohee.

Apart from the fact that we were playing the same game, we didn’t have any common interests.

But Sohee seemed happy just touching my palm next to me, and she kept smiling.

Yeah, it was easier to give her my hand than to have an awkward conversation.

I held out my hand so that Sohee could touch it comfortably.

In the end, Sohee fiddled with my hand until the moment class started that day.

She gave me a Chewy Cow candy on my hand as she returned to her seat.

Pposeurak-

I caress the wrapper in my palm.

Today’s Chewy Cow was only one.

What does it mean?

***

Tuesday, February 24th.

It was the day after the raid dungeon was reset.

The thing I was worried about finally happened.

Another raid party had taken the First Kill achievement.

The raid party that achieved the First Kill was Insordia, a hardcore legacy raid party that didn’t care about any other content.

It was a situation I had expected to some extent. The reason we had been able to get the First Kill achievement so far was thanks to the knowledge I had, not because our raid party was outstanding.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel drained.

A deep sigh escaped my lips.

It was approaching 5 PM.

That meant it was time for the Chewy Cow raid party to enter the raid dungeon.

Before starting the raid, I had finished all the checks.

Potions, doping drugs, antidotes, and the participation of the raid party members.

“Come out!”

As always, I summon a large Hell Wolf to head to the entrance of the raid dungeon.

“Eurureurang.”

The Hell Wolf, which appeared with a dignified cry, took me and started running towards the entrance of the raid dungeon.

When I arrived after running for a while, the members of the Chewy Cow raid party were already waiting.

Everyone seemed to have heard the news of another raid party’s First Kill achievement, and their faces were shadowed.

“Everyone, get ready!”

It was time to change the atmosphere. I shouted to the raid members in a bright voice.

Only then did the raid members, who had realized that I had arrived, stood up from their seats.

I looked around at them.

There were a few raid members who sometimes showed frustrating plays that I couldn’t understand, but they were still my raid members.

“Everyone, you’ve prepared perfectly today, right?”

“Raid Leader-nim… that news…”

“Yes, I heard. Another raid party got the First Kill achievement.”

“That…”

“When did I ever make a raid party aiming for First Kill? I just made a raid party and a guild to raid with you guys.”

I shook my head as I answered one of the raid members.

That’s right.

When I created the raid party, I wasn’t really aiming for achievements.

It just happened that way.

“Everyone, cheer up. Let’s go clear it too.”

Everyone’s expressions began to relax as if they had relieved the pressure from my words.

I secretly sighed. They were so nervous about something so trivial.

They were such tiring people.

“Let’s go!”

What if we didn’t get the First Kill achievement?

We can just play our own game.

Was it the effect of being freed from the pressure of having to get the First Kill?

The raid members’ movements were smoother than before.

I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw them moving on their own without any special signals.

Everyone was good, but they had been hiding their skills all along.

But, as expected, the wall of Pest was high.

The raid party was wiped out.

Today’s first try.

Everyone must be feeling it. That they can clear it if they do a little better.

“Again!”

With my declaration, the try started again.

Time continued to flow. The doping drugs and antidotes that I had brought were also gradually decreasing.

But eventually, the end came.

Kung-!

The giant Pest’s green body falls to the floor.

There are 20 survivors, including me.

In the end, we cleared the level 65 raid dungeon [Plague City Pest].

“Waaaaa!”

The raid members began to cheer. It was a raid that took a considerable amount of time to clear, unlike before.

There was no First Kill achievement either. But the raid members were shining brighter than ever.

“Whoo-“

It was really long.

Because it was a way of playing by moving my body directly instead of the keyboard and mouse, it felt like I was using up my lifespan.

I stick the sword I’m holding into the floor and lean on it.

I think I’ll have sweet dreams tonight.