Chapter 7: Breath!!! Evade it!!!(2)

If you’re someone who has enjoyed playing games to some extent, you’ve probably had the experience of grumbling while looking at skills or

techniques that make you think, ‘What am I supposed to use this skill for?’ or wondering about the game company’s intentions while reading

the explanations of such skills.

For example, the ultimate skill of a jungler champion in a famous AOS game, or similar types of skills that don’t deal any damage, have

terrible additional effects and CC, and don’t have any other advantages.

‘Fantasia Online’ also had such skills back when it was regularly operating and updating its PC room rankings. To be precise, it wasn’t a skill

but more like a basic passive or buff.

‘Racial Trait.’

In Fantasia Online, the werewolf race would enter a [Berserk] state as the full moon approached, causing their Strength, Dexterity,

Intelligence, and other stats to skyrocket.

However, a character with [Berserk] activated couldn’t be controlled by the player. Whether they were massacring allies or enemies, it meant

you had to take your hands off the keyboard and watch.

Similarly, beastmen would experience a [Heat Cycle] once a month.

Beastmen in heat would deal twice the damage to the same gender and half the damage to the opposite gender. To solve this, they had to go

to a brothel.

Players who chose elves had high basic Dexterity stats but couldn’t eat ordinary food.

Instead of simply increasing the character’s Dexterity stat through a racial trait, they were restricted to eating only [Elf-Only] food.

Considering the importance of buffs gained through food in ‘Fantasia Online,’ you could roughly understand how burdensome this restriction

was for elf players.

Like this, there were certainly advantages, but they were difficult to utilize, and users called the passive abilities that were basically given to

each race from LV.1 ‘Racial Traits.’

And since these ‘Racial Traits’ weren’t skills and were like passives provided from level 1, they were also applied to users who had crossed

over to reality with their physical abilities fixed at LV.1.

Since the dragon race was also one of the races in ‘Fantasia Online,’ it also possessed one of these useless traits.

The name of the draconian, or dragon race’s, physical trait was [Half-Human Half-Dragon Body]. It was a trait with pros and cons that

increased mana sensitivity, i.e., magic stat, but severely restricted the other stats. Up to this point, it seemed like a normal trait that wasn’t

particularly different from the traits of other races, but…

‘…There’s one hidden fact.’

If you asked people about ‘abilities that come to mind when you think of dragons,’ you’d get many kinds of answers.

Magical aptitude, huge body, special eyes, excellent intelligence, long lifespan, etc…

However, among them, there was one answer that would come up the most.

‘Breath.’

Dragons could invest some of their mana and shoot a ‘Dragon Breath,’ which was a concentrated form of their attribute mana – in my case,

ice attribute mana. The problem was that since the dragon race had a ‘Half-Human Half-Dragon Body’ instead of a complete dragon body,

using it would cause their body to overload in proportion to the mana invested.

Therefore, ‘Breath’ was a typical trash trait for dragon race users, where the more mana they invested to increase its destructive power, the

more their body would overload, with high risks but low returns.

The dragon race itself was an unpopular, niche race, and even the users who chose that niche race shunned the trait, calling it trash.

During my newbie days, I also agreed with the opinions of other dragon race users, and after using the racial trait ‘Breath’ a few times to

make ice to put in my drinks during hot summers, it was forgotten from my mind.

Until just now, before I saw that girl.

The girl with the unique nickname who had said she wanted to be hit by Breath from the first meeting.

Thanks to the memories of that time being revived by seeing her, I could remember that I could use the racial trait ‘Breath’ even in my

current state where I couldn’t use any skills.

If I had cast Breath with my existing ordinary spec, I probably would have produced a cube of ice just good enough to put in an iced

Americano. However, since I currently had a mana pool no different from a ranking user, my Breath was a disaster in the eyes of ordinary

people.

“Cough, ugh, f*ck…”

Every time I coughed with a feeling of phlegm filling my throat, a puddle of blood formed on the floor. It seemed like I was properly

overloaded. I glanced at the status window that was set to be in the corner.

[You have used ‘Breath.’ Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence stats are temporarily decreased.]

[You have excessively used mana. ‘Mana Overload’ debuff is applied.]

[Health is very low. Quick first aid and rest are required to avoid death.]

The red notification windows that used to pop up when a character was in danger of dying in the game were blocking my view. Who knew I

would see this in reality? The situation I was in was so absurd that I let out a self-deprecating laugh.

‘Am I finally crazy?’

Perhaps because of the laughter that kept bursting out, a tingling pain gradually spread from inside my chest. In fact, this pain was a natural

progression.

I felt a throbbing pain in my head. Perhaps, according to the settings of ‘Fantasia Online,’ this symptom was a symptom of the phenomenon

called ‘Mana Overload.’ The status window actually told me that such a debuff had been applied.

[Mana is insufficient. Symptoms such as headache and dizziness may be felt.]

A notification window warning that mana was insufficient appeared in front of my eyes again. It was a natural progression since I had poured

all of my mana, which had increased with my magic stat correction, into the Breath just now.

“..Cough, cough…”

 

The problem was whether my frail body could withstand the overload and wounds inflicted on my body as a result. Due to the nature of

‘Breath,’ where the body is damaged in proportion to the mana, I was on the verge of death. As evidence… I had no sensation in my entire

body except for my torso and head. This was because my limbs were half-frozen thanks to the Breath made of ice attribute mana.

 

What was fortunate, at least, was that everyone swept away by the Breath had died in one go. Except for two people on the lower part of the

stage, a gentleman and a beastman girl who were out of range of my Breath, everyone else had become frozen ice statues. Unless there were

users mixed among those masked humans, there was no possibility that the people in that ice were alive.

‘…Did about a hundred people die?’

What was a little surprising was that I didn’t feel any guilt even though I had done something that could be seen as a massacre. Rather, if I

were to say whether I felt good or bad, my current feeling was on the good side. I had cleanly sent those pathetic humans who treated me like

a product away in one go. To make an analogy, it was like cleanly dealing with humanoid monsters gathered in one place with a single skill in

the game.

“Mo, monster…!”

The gentleman who looked like the owner of the mountain, that is, my acquaintance, the girl, was already sitting down and trembling

disgracefully. It was obvious how my appearance, making people freeze alive and laughing while bleeding disgracefully as a result, would be

seen in his eyes. He was probably seeing me as a crazy psychopath. Not that I cared.

Anyway, most of those human traffickers and their customers were already dead. Since it was not my business to deal with them, I called out

the name of the girl who was staring blankly at me from afar.

“Hey, Han Ye-jin! You bichcoughare you okay, you batard!”

As I tried to get up from my seat, I fell forward. Intense pain rose from the face that hit the floor first.

“Help me up! We have to run away before other humans come!”

In fact, there would be a lot of people, including security guards, in the banquet hall outside this auction house. If they realized this situation,

the possibility of us escaping safely would be close to 0. But whether she didn’t know my heart, she slowly walked to the stage and opened her

mouth.

“…I don’t think we need to do that. Anyway, it’s been a while, oppa. You’ve changed so much that I couldn’t recognize you.”

The beastman girl, that is, Yejin, bowed to me. I was about to shout that it wasn’t the time to greet so leisurely, but coincidentally, blood

flowed out from inside my throat at the timing I opened my mouth.

“Cough, hey, it’s not time to say that…”

“And, I’m sorry. I have something I need to take care of right now.”

-Wooddeudeuk.

The head of the gentleman sitting on the ground was bent at an angle it shouldn’t be. Along with the sound of the man’s corpse falling, she

whispered to me.

“My younger sibling is captured. I’ll rescue only that child and come back right away.”

She roughly pressed down on the floor as if there was nothing to worry about. Seeing the marble floor cracking intensely, I realized that she

had also awakened the status window.

“…You have that much power, and you were captured here?”

“After opening the status window just now, it said that stat corrections are applied from the moment the status window is turned on. Until I

turned on the status window, I was just a normal beastman weaker than ordinary people, so it couldn’t be helped that I was captured. Of

course, if I had opened the status window sooner, the situation might have been a little different.”

In fact, most users ignored the status window and lived their lives. Since nothing had changed for almost a year, their main thought was that

opening the status window and raising expectations would only make them feel more deprived. I was a special case who checked the status

window every morning, and if I was a normal user, I would have realized that I had awakened a few days later.

If that were the case, I would have been sold at a high price as a ‘product’ of some wealthy person by now. And after that…

I decided not to think about what would happen next. It would only make me feel worse.

That being said, she should be happy to have gained the powerful strength of the users in the game, but Yejin’s expression didn’t look so

good.

‘…The status window has also been normalized, and the stat corrections have been applied, so aren’t you happy? If I were you, I would be

jumping around with excitement right now.’

“I’m happy. Very. It’s just that it doesn’t show well.”

Even while saying that, her gaze was clearly pointing at me. Combined with Yejin’s unique cold expression, a difficult-to-approach

atmosphere was formed.

When I closed my mouth, Yejin, who finally took her eyes off me, opened her mouth.

“I’ll really be back now. Ah, before that…”

With a clatter, something was hung around my neck.

‘…A leash?’

“Wait quietly.”

“…What?”

Hearing the sound of her kicking off the ground, I raised my head to see that Han Yejin had already disappeared.

‘…Wait, what exactly was her game nickname?’

Feeling awkward with the leather leash around my neck, I was swept away by an unknown chill.

● Author’s Note

If you guess what Yejin’s nickname is, I’ll do a double update

It’s hard to update every day. Still, I’m gaining strength by reading each and every comment. I’m always grateful to the readers who read this

lacking story!

There may be typos and awkward parts in the middle! I’ll fix it immediately if I receive a report! I would appreciate it if you could report any

awkward parts!