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[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Starfall ]
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Chapter 01: Prologue
It all started with something trivial.
[StrawberryLatte]:
Bro, don’t you ever get tired of always playing hardcore games?
Open-world dark fantasy RPG—Lost Elder.
Nicknamed Loel.
Even after pouring a full twelve years into this game, I had never once reached the true ending.
And it wasn’t just me.
Though it had been years since the game first launched, no one—absolutely no one—had ever cleared the true ending. All anyone ever got was the bad ending.
That’s just how insanely difficult Loel is.
Bosses with outrageous patterns.
An overly intricate and vast world map.
A growth system that’s utterly unfriendly to players.
As a game that proudly branded itself as “ultra hardcore,” Loel wore its absurd difficulty like a badge of honor.
Even the world’s top gaming YouTubers took it on with bravado, only to give up within a few days. That says it all...
Naturally, Loel’s short-lived popularity quickly fizzled out.
In an era where casual, easy-to-control games dominate the market, Loel’s downfall was inevitable.
Now, only about fifty players in Korea still stuck with this outdated title.
This small group gathered in niche communities, exchanging intel in a desperate effort to finally clear the game.
I was one of them.
[StrawberryLatte]:
Why not try a joke run this time? You only ever play Loel, so what’ll you do if you burn out on even that?
That’s when my younger brother, who’d been playing with me, offered some advice.
Told me to stop always playing seriously and try a lighthearted “joke” run for once.
“…”
Normally, I’d have brushed it off.
After all, I was a tryhard gamer to the core.
I wasn’t in this for laughs—I was here to chase the true ending. Casual playstyles? That was kid stuff to me.
‘...Should I actually try it just this once?’
But that day was different.
After twelve years of constant failure, I was stuck in a deep rut.
Mentally and emotionally exhausted—I needed something fresh.
And so—
Click.
—for the first time, I decided to try what people call a concept playthrough.
[StrawberryLatte]:
Still blows my mind.
How do you play Loel for twelve years and never once try a concept run?
[MiddleFinger (Me)]:
It’s just preference, really.
You’ve played League of Legends for over a decade and still refuse to touch support characters.
[StrawberryLatte]:
That’s not the same thing…
It was.
At least for me, it was.
[StrawberryLatte]:
Anyway, Most joke runs fall into two categories.
Either you build a trash-tier character like a “Strength Mage,” or you dump all your stat points into one attribute and stick to that concept hard.
[MiddleFinger (Me)]:
I’ll go with the second option.
[StrawberryLatte]:
Stat dump?
[MiddleFinger (Me)]:
Yup.
In Loel, hyper-focusing on a single attribute was practically a taboo.
The game’s system demanded a solid foundation to perform even basic actions.
If you wanted to wield a heavy weapon, you needed the Strength or Stamina to support it.
If you wanted to use magic, you needed the Mana or Insight to back it up.
That’s why distributing your stats evenly—the so-called “Hexagon Build”—was the most stable and efficient approach, even endorsed by top-ranked players.
‘But hey, I’m not playing efficiently today anyway…’
This character wasn’t about optimization.
It was about fun.
So I decided to dump everything into just one talent.
Click.
Sword.
One of the “Hidden Mastery: Weapon Arts” talents that unlocks only after defeating a mid-tier boss.
No particular reason—I just liked sword-type characters, so I chose that.
“Let’s see… I’ll add this… and maybe toss this in too…”
Not just the base starter stats, but every bonus stat and perk I’d earned over hundreds of playthroughs—I dumped everything into this character.
Achievement points.
Bonus stats from killing named monsters.
All of it.
“...Whew, that should do it.”
Once I finished assigning all the stats, I looked over at my monitor.
True to its open-world nature, Loel allowed even the most absurd builds—including this all-in-one-stat monstrosity.
━━━━━━━━━━━━
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Stamina: 1
Mana: 1
Insight: 1
…
【Hidden Mastery】
Weapon Arts
Sword: Lv. MAX
━━━━━━━━━━━━
After customizing, the status window closed and the character appeared onscreen.
The moment I saw him, I burst out laughing.
“Pffft—what is this!?”
He looked painfully frail.
Skin and bones. Barely able to stand.
He dragged a shabby one-handed sword behind him like it weighed a ton.
I couldn’t help but snicker at the ridiculous sight on my screen.
What good is god-tier sword talent if you’re too weak to lift a sword?
As if the system itself pitied this pitiful character, it began displaying the following messages:
[Warning: Certain stats are abnormally low.]
[System Recommendation: Consider redistributing your stat points—]
“Nope.”
I dismissed the warning without hesitation.
[Warning: This character is not viable for normal gameplay.]
[Are you sure you want to proceed—]
“Yes.”
So what if he wasn’t viable?
That was the whole point of this build.
Click.
I moved on to the next screen.
And then—
A new message popped up on my monitor.
[The Pantheon is astonished by your unparalleled talent! The Forgotten Harmonizers bless your journey!]
[Reward: You’ve obtained the Hidden Skill: Soul of the Swordmaster.]
“…Huh? What the hell is this?”
I frowned.
A hidden skill? I didn’t know Loel had something like that.
“Usually after customizing, it just jumps straight to the cutscene…”
In all twelve years of playing, I’d never seen this.
Muttering under my breath, I opened the newly appeared skill window in the corner of the screen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━
【Soul of the Swordmaster】
Grade: ★★★★★★★★★★★★ (12-Star – Mythic Tier)
Type: Toggle (ON/OFF) Skill
Mana Cost: 100 per second
[Skill Description]
Among tens of millions of ordinary people, the most gifted are called “geniuses.”
Among tens of millions of geniuses, the best of them are called “Swordmasters.”
You are the most gifted of all the Swordmasters across not millions—but hundreds of millions.
Stand tall.
No threat can ever break you.
[Passive Effect]
The “Willpower” stat is permanently MAXED.
[Active Effect]
When activated, you enter the state of Perfection.
“…What?”
My eyes widened in disbelief.
“Soul of the Swordmaster? Wait, hold on. Did that just say 12-star skill?”
A chill ran down my spine.
Twelve stars.
And not just that—it was mythic-tier.
In all my time playing Loel, I had never once seen a skill ranked this high.
Until now, the highest-known skill grade was only 10 stars.
So what the hell was this?
“Holy crap, I need to take a screenshot.”
Click—!
I pulled out my phone and snapped a shot of the screen.
Sure, it wouldn’t be as crisp as a direct screen capture, but at least no one would accuse me of doctoring it.
[MiddleFinger (Me)]:
Yo.
I just got a 12-star skill.
(photo)
I immediately sent the picture to StrawberryLatte.
Not even three seconds passed before my notifications started blowing up.
[StrawberryLatte]:
????
WTF did you do??
[MiddleFinger (Me)]:
Just dumped every point I had into the character. This happened.
[StrawberryLatte]:
Bro, I do the same thing every time I do a concept run.
Never once got anything like that.
[MiddleFinger (Me)]:
How many achievement points do you have?
[StrawberryLatte]:
…Around 30 million?
“Thirty million, huh…”
I glanced over at the number displayed in the corner of my screen.
【179,312,341 pt】
Rounded up, that was just shy of 180 million.
Roughly six times more than StrawberryLatte, who was ranked #2.
No wonder no one else had ever discovered a 12-star skill.
So that’s what it takes. You need this kind of ridiculous point investment to unlock hidden rewards.
If I’d known that, I would’ve tried a concept run much sooner.
[StrawberryLatte]:
Wait, how many points do you have to get something like that??
[MiddleFinger (Me)]:
(photo)
[StrawberryLatte]:
?
The moment I sent the screenshot of my achievement points, the chat went dead silent.
I waited for three whole minutes, but no reply came.
The guy must’ve been completely stunned.
“Well, anyway…”
I turned my attention back to the monitor.
━━━━━━━━━━━━
【Soul of the Swordmaster】
Grade: ★★★★★★★★★★★★ (12-star – Mythic Tier)
Type: Toggle Skill (On/Off)
━━━━━━━━━━━━
Soul of the Swordmaster.
Even if I didn’t know the full extent of its effects, there was no doubt—it had to be absurdly powerful.
I mean, come on. It was twelve stars.
Even 【Meteor】, which could wipe an entire small city off the map, was only rated 10 stars. That really put things into perspective.
“Ah—wait.”
Then, as I read the description more carefully, I couldn’t help but frown.
I’d just noticed a problem I hadn’t anticipated.
〔Mana Cost: 100 per second〕
“Haah…”
A hundred mana per second?
What a cruel joke.
Sure, in most cases, that wouldn’t be considered an enormous cost.
Once you left the starting area, the average character had around 2000 MP.
So technically, Soul of the Swordmaster could be maintained for about 20 seconds even at early levels.
But…
〔MP: 1 / 1〕
…my character wasn’t exactly “normal.”
His max MP stat was literally 1.
I’d foolishly set every single stat to 1, except for the swordsmanship talent.
So how long could I even activate this skill?
0.01 seconds?
Could I even use it at all?
What’s the point of getting a 12-star skill if I can’t even use the damn thing?
It might actually be better to redistribute my stats and give myself at least some mana pool.
I hit the back button to adjust my build slightly.
At the very least, I wanted to be able to try the skill I just unlocked.
Click—
“…Huh?”
Suddenly, the game screen froze.
“What the… What’s going on?”
Click. Click. Clickclickclick—!
No matter how much I clicked, nothing changed.
I grumbled in frustration.
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
I figured it was just lag—typical of an old game like this—so I moved to force-quit the client.
But then—
“…Wait, what…?”
The screen began to glow with an eerie, bright light as a strange message appeared:
〔You who have surpassed your limits…〕
〔Challenge the impossible, and become a myth yourself.〕
Fwooooosh—!
My vision went black.
I felt like I was being sucked into a vortex—my entire body weightless.
And then—nothing.
That was where my memory ended.
I did say it started as something trivial, didn’t I?
A washed-up veteran messing around with new character customization…
A broken stat build...
And then getting sucked straight into the game world.
A tired old trope. Nothing new.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up the protagonist of one of those stories.
“Son of a bitch…”
And just like that, it’s already been five days since I got pulled into this game.
〔Hidden Message: You have begun your 200th playthrough.〕
〔Hidden Message: You are the first player to enter this world.〕
〔Hidden Message: The timeline of Lost Elder begins to flow.〕
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[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Starfall ]
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