Max Level Newbie Hides His Strength - Chapter 1.1
Han Jiho stretched and looked at the monitor.
Echo of Eternity.
Once so popular it dominated 90% of PC Rooms [1], but now long past its prime, the MMORPG had fallen into ruin due to lack of content, poor balance patches, and the misdeeds of the devs. Its logo floated in the center of the screen.
The screen changed, and grand music began to play.
Futuristic, dazzlingly designed characters fought wars across a dark galaxy, explored massive dungeons and vast fields, showing off their spectacular skills. The game’s video trailer lasted for about a minute.
Apparently, this was the opening video for a recent major update.
It was certainly well-made and pleasing to the eye, but Han Jiho’s expression remained flat.
The setting was not just space, but a ruined universe in the distant future, and felt unfamiliar. Overall, the tone was darker and heavier than the games he was used to.
“……”
It might have been popular once, but it didn’t fit current trends. Nowadays, people prefer fast-paced, light, and bright games.
Jiho’s taste was the same. He didn’t even like MMORPGs. Farming items and following storylines always felt tedious. If not for his friend Seo Jaeyoon’s persuasion, he would’ve never touched this kind of game.
That’s why Han Jiho lived his whole life playing FPS games.
Rather, he spent his whole life dominating them.
From childhood, he’d mastered every FPS he touched. He’d been a top-ranked player in the hyper-FPS Xenoforce, a world champion, and a living legend.
Well… he was.
Past tense, because about six months ago, a scandal had forced him into temporary retirement. But that wasn’t important now.
Anyway, according to Seo Jaeyoon, Echo of Eternity — or EoE for short — was a first-person “loot shooter,” an FPS combined with MMORPG elements. In short, a shooting game with RPG-style farming and character growth.
Jaeyoon had gone on and on about how it satisfied both RPG and FPS fans alike, but to Jiho, it just seemed like neither. It was a halfway game, not fully one thing or the other.
Still, when EoE first launched, he’d been tempted to try it out just to see what it was like.
But that was right when training began for Xenoforce’s World Championship, leaving him no time for other games. And then EoE suffered from unbalanced difficulty, lack of content, and even an absurd scandal: the devs embezzling funds. It crashed and burned.
And so, Echo of Eternity flopped tragically, and vanished from Jiho’s mind completely…
After a long time, he finally downloaded it when he was unemployed, with nothing better to do, swayed by Jaeyoon’s pleading and rumors that the game had become god-tier under new management.
The long, flashy opening video ended. Visually stunning, but so obscure that it was incomprehensible.
Note/s:
[1] ↩
