The Latest Game Is Too Amazing

Raphael, having escaped from danger, drinks an elixir to heal himself as he stares at the boy who saved him.

The black-haired, black-eyed teenage boy is wearing light equipment for beginner adventurers rather than the armor supplied by the royal army. His face is unfamiliar. Raphael doesn’t remember all 3000 of his soldiers’ faces. However, as the knight commander who has served his kingdom for many years, Raphael would have at least some memory of him if he was a soldier in the royal army, but he has no memory of ever seeing this boy’s face before.

‘One of the adventurers we recruited? And judging by the circumstances, he seems to be a mage.’

He doesn’t know the current status of the other units, but since they were split up, it would make sense if one or two soldiers or adventurers got separated from the group. It wouldn’t be strange at all for that to happen to him in an emergency situation like this, especially if he’s an adventurer who was recruited on short notice and isn’t accustomed to the army.

‘Even so, it’s rather odd,’ Raphael thinks, noticing something out of place about the boy’s appearance. ‘His cloak is too clean. No, there is also that, but he has no fatigue, either, to the point that it’s unnatural.’

Every soldier here, Raphael included, has fought in battle after battle, causing their armor to turn red with blood from their enemies and their own wounds and black with soot from burnt treants. Their faces also showed exhaustion from the hard-fought battles.

However, although there are stains on the boy’s cloak, he can easily be called clean in comparison to the rest of them, who are covered with wounds. On top of that, his breathing is so steady that it almost looks like he’s not tired at all.

Has he made it all the way here without running into orcs or treants even once? But the Elder Treant’s underlings are everywhere, and they encountered many orcs on the way here, so it’s hard to believe that he alone would be overlooked.

In that case, that would mean he ran away from them, but even then, his breathing would be much rougher than this. Would it even be possible for him in the first place to break through the enemy’s line of defense in this disadvantageous situation where the enemy’s position and his own location are both unknown to him?

Although it does bother him, it’s true that this boy saved him, and the added strength of an uninjured mage would be a great help. If they defeat the Elder Treant, which is using dark arts to control the orcs, those orcs would turn into motionless puppets. To win this battle, they need to defeat the Elder Treant by any means necessary.

“You’ve saved me, I give you my thanks! I apologize for asking this of you when you’ve only just arrived, but I’d like to borrow your strength. Could you defeat the nearby treants?”

The boy nods in acknowledgement.

Raphael looks at the Elder Treant. The Elder Treant’s arm that grabbed Raphael has just barely managed not to break off, but the damage is so deep that it could snap off with even the slightest impact.

“Curse you, foolish human who has gotten in my way and wounded me! You will pay for this!” the Elder Treant says to the boy with intense hostility, but the boy does not falter, as if he’s entirely unbothered by this. The sight of his indifference only magnifies the Elder Treant’s rage. “My underlings! Do not let that foolish human get away with his life!”

Three treants head for the boy.

“No! Go, defend him!” Raphael orders in a panic, but since his men are surrounded, the monsters are closer to the boy than they are. They won’t make it in time to defend him.

The boy swiftly shoots a Fire Arrow at the treants to hold them off. One of them is enveloped in flames, and the one behind it recoils. The last one, however, avoids the flames and knocks the boy over with its arm. He’s frail in comparison to the soldiers and knights, so he’s sent tumbling. After three rolls, the boy finally comes to a stop.

Have I let my savior die? Raphael clenches his fist in frustration at his own disgrace. Due to his own powerlessness, this boy’s young life has been cut short. Unable to hold back the surge of rage and regret, he’s nearly consumed by it.

However…

The boy suddenly stands up like nothing happened. It seems that he’s alright. There doesn’t even appear to be any pain in his expression. Seeing this, Raphael is relieved.

‘From the look of it, it seemed clear that he wouldn’t be able to walk away from that unharmed. Perhaps he was hit in a convenient location?’

Fortunately, the boy has gotten up as if nothing happened, and he counterattacks the treant. Meanwhile, the soldiers have broken through the enemy’s slightly thinned encirclement, and dozens of them surround the boy to protect him. A cleric also casts support magic to make his spells more effective. The boy’s magic was quite powerful for his apparent age, so if they supplement that with support magic…

In addition to the treants that were engulfed in flames, a new group of treants attacks the boy and the soldiers. As the soldiers successfully protect him from the clutches of the treants by putting their lives on the line, the boy uses the extra leeway to burn the treants to ashes with his magic. The way he appears to be simply doing his job with indifference and composure gives off the strong impression of an experienced mage.

“I’m being overpowered by a mere human?! My underlings, attack that accursed human relentlessly!” the Elder Treant shouts, full of frustration.

Now, all the treants can see is that boy. With increased root attacks, the treants’ offense and defense regarding the boy and those around him becomes more fierce. Conversely, since their attacks become too focused on him, they decrease their attacks on the other soldiers.

“Now! Focus your attacks on the treants!”

The treants’ encirclement weakens, and Raphael and his men force them back all at once. Until now, they were surrounded and overpowered by the enemy, but thanks to the group that formed around the boy, they’re able to attack from both sides. No matter how much stronger they are than humans, there’s nothing the treants can do against an attack from two directions, and they’re destroyed one after another.

“Mana Explosion.”

The boy causes an explosion that takes out many of the treants, tipping the scales heavily in their favor. Before they knew it, this boy’s arrival turned the tide of the battle.

“Alright, we must strike the Elder Treant before reinforcements arrive. Half of you, hold back the remaining treants! Everyone else, you’ll bring down the Elder Treant with me!”

The soldiers follow Raphael’s orders and split up into the Elder Treant-slaying group and the treant-fighting group. Since the Elder Treant has a technique to take control of people, they attack with magic and arrows from out of its range or make use of hit-and-run tactics, striking it and backing away repeatedly. The Elder Treant’s face no longer has even the slightest bit of composure and is instead filled with panic.

“Why?! Why are mere humans capable of this?!” the Elder Treant says, driven so far into a corner that he had to express his panic in words.

Normally, the royal army would have been defeated after they were surrounded. But the appearance of the boy put a crack in the Elder Treant’s composure, causing it to issue a command that changed the outcome of the battle. It’s true that the boy was a threat, but it shouldn’t have thinned the encirclement. Breaking the encirclement allowed the soldiers to pass through and make it to him. As a result, they attacked the treants on both sides, and the treants, inferior in number, were taken out one after another, drastically reducing their military strength, which led to the current situation. If it had called the orcs back, neither the boy nor the royal army would have been able to recover from that.

Raphael bisects the Elder Treant’s arm with his sword and cuts into its trunk. As he pulls back, he turns around to destroy a treant, and the boy points his staff at the Elder Treant once more. The Elder Treant is then engulfed in an explosion of blue flames. The repeated attacks shave away at its trunk, and it begins making a creaking noise. Unable to support its own weight, the Elder Treant falls over.

“Gaaaah!! L- Lord Mosdeuuuus!!” the Elder Treant calls for help from its master, and its death cry echoes through the clearing.

The ancient tree’s last words cause all other noise to temporarily cease.

The next moment, they let out an exuberant cry of victory. The remaining treants, realizing that they have lost their master, begin to flee in confusion.

“Don’t let the treants get away! Crush them all!” Raphael shouts, and they begin pursuit.

They’ve already won this fight, where they were at a great disadvantage. The orcs have turned into motionless puppets now that the puppetmaster has been defeated. This should also mitigate the damage to their allies. This battle that was under the complete control of the monsters they were meant to hunt has miraculously transformed into a dramatic triumph.

Suddenly, Raphael notices that some of the plants are starting to wither.

“What in the world is…?”

“Since the Elder Treant was defeated, its underlings can’t stay alive on their own, so they’re dying,” says the boy.

“You…” he starts, but before he can ask how the boy knows this, the boy interrupts him.

“I’m Chaos. It’s time for me to go. I’m sorry.”

The boy silently disappears, as if his job here is done.

It was the day before the last day of the closed beta test. The last day was on Monday and it ended in the morning, so since I had school, today was the last day I could play in the closed beta test.

To commemorate that last day, I was eager to defeat the boss in the north of Castal Kingdom, the Elder Treant, so I went to the Treant Forest, but that turned out to be a lot more trouble than I had expected. I finally made it to the Treant Forest the day before, on Saturday night, but unfortunately, I couldn’t reach the boss since there were so many enemies that I couldn’t go very far in.

So, I had planned to try again on Sunday, but my mom got mad at me for spending too much time playing video games. Normally, she wouldn’t get mad about something like this, but as gentle as she is, even she will occasionally take her anger out on others when she’s fighting with my dad. There was probably something going on with him this time, too.

My mom stands at the top of the family hierarchy, and making her mood worse could be a matter of life and death food-wise, so it would be dangerous to go against her. I had no choice but to help her out with housework on Sunday morning to please her, and in the afternoon I finally managed to get permission to play with a two hour time limit.

I logged in and reentered the forest where just yesterday I had been running around and trying to escape. For some reason, it was noisy in the forest. I opened the map window and headed for the boss.

‘I’m pretty sure that yesterday, there was a group of orcs up ahead that I couldn’t get past, so maybe I should go around?’ I thought, looking at the map, but something was off.

When I looked closely, I couldn’t see any orcs. I tilted my head, wondering why, but apparently, the orcs’ positions had changed since the day before.

Thinking of this as good luck, I headed towards the boss. As I moved while looking at the map, it seemed that there were other players in this forest being intercepted by orcs. Thanks to that, only a few orcs attacked me and I was able to deal with them just fine by myself, so unlike yesterday, I was easily able to go further in. Since it didn’t look like there were any dead trees yet, it seemed like the boss was still alive. As I approached the boss’s location, a large group of players were already mid-battle. Apparently, everyone had the same idea as me. Even so, I never imagined that there would be a raid with nearly a hundred players.

Just when I was about to give up and decide that it wasn’t my place to join in, one of the players in the group shouted, “Rescue the commander!”

When I looked closely, one of them was being grabbed by the boss and looked like he was about to get crushed. They called him the commander, so he was probably the party leader or something. ‘What do I do, should I get involved?’ I thought, hesitating, but since they said they wanted him rescued, I decided it was okay to get involved and cast Mana Bolt. The casting time was harsh, but normal firepower wouldn’t be enough against a boss.

The explosion hit the boss, the Elder Treant, in the arm, and it released its hostage. I actually intended to explode the boss’s body, but it was difficult to aim when it had a hostage. I didn’t want to take out the player along with it. Those kinds of issues are common with wide-range spells, and a lot of people consider it a problem. The admins promised to take care of it, so it might be fixed in the open beta.

“You’ve saved me, I give you my thanks! I apologize for asking this of you when you’ve only just arrived, but I’d like to borrow your strength. Could you defeat the nearby treants?” said the man who had been taken hostage, a Warrior-looking guy. I was glad that saving him seemed to be the right decision.

Just as he said, it was true that the treants surrounding the party would make it difficult for them to approach the boss. It seemed like I should probably cooperate.

I nodded, and the Elder Treant sent treants at me in anger. This wasn’t the first time I was surprised by how advanced the NPC AIs are, but it’s oddly human for a boss monster to get angry. This game is really well-made.

I attacked the treants with a Fire Arrow. Since treants are weak to fire, fire elemental skills deal 50% more damage. But the attack missed one of them, so I got hit and sent tumbling. I only felt a vibration in my side where the attack hit me, so it was more ticklish than painful, but tumbling any more than that would make me dizzy.

I hurriedly checked my HP and found that it had already been reduced to 30%. A single attack taking out 70% of my HP, just how weak can I be? I took a mid-level potion with Emergency Use and recovered immediately.

I counterattacked the treants, and players surrounded me to defend me from the treants’ attacks. Man, what nice people. They figured out how weak I am and came to protect me right away. They even gave me a buff (that’s an RPG term for skills that temporarily make you more powerful).

“Intelligence Boost.”

Just as the name implies, it’s a magic skill that gives a percentage boost to the Intelligence stat. The effect increases according to skill level, so at level 1 it increases by 10%, and at level 5 it’s 50%. The one that was cast on me was level 3, so my Intelligence increased by 30%.

Since they were doing this much for me, I had to give it my all. I systematically massacred the enemy. Since my spells were more powerful, they dealt more than enough damage to the treants.

I realized that we were dominating the fight as I watched the smooth movements of the other players, especially the commander that got taken hostage. His polished hit-and-run movements must have been practiced a lot. He was exchanging blows and dealing damage to the boss so flawlessly that I felt like I would never have the talent for it.

How do I compare to that? I was thinking of trying a different class in the open beta, but have I mastered the Magician class as well as he has his? I’d like to reach that level of mastery if I can. Maybe I should make a Magician in the open beta after all. That’s what I thought as I watched him.

The commander cut off the Elder Treant’s arm. There were no more treants around. I figured I should also join in and attack the boss. Casting my most powerful spell, Mana Explosion, I caused the Elder Treant to fall over.

…Oops, did I deal the final blow? W- well, the commander was the one who dealt the most damage and landed the most attacks, so I’m sure he was the MVP of this boss fight. And he was also giving instructions to about a hundred players, so maybe he was doing a guild event to defeat the boss.

The other players rejoiced and then hunted down the remaining treants. The boss was defeated, so they probably didn’t need my help anymore.

“What in the world is…?” the commander said in confusion. He was probably wondering why some of the trees were rapidly withering. Apparently, he hadn’t seen the wiki.

“Since the Elder Treant was defeated, its underlings can’t stay alive on their own, so they’re dying.”

Apparently, that’s the plot of this boss, so there’s no need to go all the way into the forest to see if the boss is there. It was difficult to make it in, too, so this design is really considerate.

“You…”

He seemed like a good guy, so I really wanted to befriend him, but I didn’t have much time to talk. My time was almost up. My mom asked me to go shopping for dinner with her after this, so I had to hurry and log out.

“I’m Chaos. It’s time for me to go (shopping). I’m sorry (that we can’t talk),” I hurriedly apologized, and then I logged out.

After logging out and checking the time, I just barely made it within the time limit. Now, it’s time to help my mom so her mood doesn’t get worse.