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Han Jiho stretched and looked at his monitor.

Echo of Eternity.

Floating in the center of the screen was the logo for an MMORPG that was way too late to start now—a game that was once so popular it occupied 90 percent of PC café market shares, but had walked the path to rock bottom due to a lack of content, unbalanced patches, and the tyranny of the operations team.

Soon, the screen changed, and grand music began to flow.

For about a minute, a video played featuring characters with futuristic and flashy designs fighting wars across the dark universe, exploring massive and dangerous dungeons and vast fields while showing off brilliant skills.

He had heard they did some sort of major update recently; it seemed this opening video was created to introduce it.

It was certainly a well-made video that was pleasing to the eye, but Han Jiho’s expression as he watched it was merely indifferent.

It wasn’t just a regular outer space; the game’s setting of a desolate universe in the distant future felt unfamiliar. Overall, it gave off a much darker and heavier atmosphere than the games he had played before.

“…”

It might have been popular in the past, but it wasn’t a game that fit current trends. Nowadays, people tended to prefer a fast tempo and a light, bright feel.

Han Jiho’s tastes were the same. To begin with, he didn’t even like the MMORPG genre. This was because it was a chore to farm items every single time and progress through a story according to a set flow. If it weren’t for his friend Seo Jaeyoon’s recommendation (which was actually a forced demand), he never would have played a game like this.

That was why Han Jiho had spent his entire life playing only FPS games.

No, did he just “play” them?

Having mastered all kinds of FPS games since he was young, he was currently a top-tier ranker in the hyper-FPS game ‘XenoForce’—which was enjoying sensational popularity worldwide—and a professional gamer with skills so outstanding he was called a living legend after winning world championships.

No, he was a living legend.

The reason it was in the past tense was that he was currently in a state of tentative retirement due to a scandal that occurred about six months ago, but since that wasn’t what was important right now, let’s just move past it for a moment.

Anyway, according to Seo Jaeyoon’s explanation, Echo of Eternity—EoE for short—was a first-person looter shooter genre that combined FPS with MMORPG; to put it simply, it was a game that was fundamentally a shooting game but included RPG elements like farming and character growth.

So, Seo Jaeyoon had rambled on and on about how it was a game that could satisfy the tastes of both RPG lovers and FPS lovers at the same time, but… well. To Han Jiho, it only looked like a game of a genre that was neither here nor there. It didn’t feel like an RPG, nor an FPS, but like it just had its feet dipped awkwardly in both.

Still, when EoE was first released, he felt interested in the news that a new FPS game had come out and intended to give it a “tasting.”

However, just then, full-scale training for the XenoForce World Championship began, leaving him no room to enjoy other games. On top of that, EoE also faced an absurd issue where the development funds were embezzled by the operations team along with the difficulty imbalance and lack of content, ultimately leading it down the path to rock bottom.

And so, Echo of Eternity became an ill-fated flop and completely vanished from Han Jiho’s mind, but…

After a long, long time had passed, he ended up downloading the game. Since he had become unemployed and had nothing in particular to do, coupled with Seo Jaeyoon’s desperate pleading and rumors that it was becoming a “god-tier game” after the operations team changed.

Finally, the long and flashy opening video came to an end. It was pleasing to the eyes, but it was a cryptic video to the point where he couldn’t tell what the story was.

Afterward, the game logo appeared one last time, and below it, the title of the newly updated scenario content was written.

Echo Of Eternity Shadow of the Forgotten Star

“The name is certainly grand.”

Perhaps because the game’s setting was space, the scale was magnificently grand to match. It was quite a contrast to XenoForce, which didn’t really have a story to speak of.

After sniffling for a moment, Han Jiho immediately clicked the ‘Create New Character’ tab to enter the creation window. There, the three classes users could choose from appeared in a row along with brief descriptions.

Harder resolve than steel. Become the shield of the battlefield. → A front-line guardian who blocks enemy attacks from the front and protects allies.

Disappears with the darkness, returns with death. → Breaks the balance of the battlefield based on high mobility, continuous evasion, and lethal damage.

Hope does not vanish, and light does not go out. → Heals allies, purifies status ailments, and revives life in moments of crisis.

“Oh.”

Han Jiho let out a low exclamation of admiration at the appearance of the characters, which highlighted their sci-fi aspects. The basic positions of the three classes were the familiar Tanker, Dealer, and Supporter.

Based on a rough search he did before starting the game, it was a format where you chose one of them and developed it by selecting a second sub-job and skills that matched the job’s attributes according to your preference.

However, one unique thing was that the direction and position of the class changed freely depending on the choice of the second sub-job.

It had a unique system where the basic skills provided remained the same but could be modified according to the user’s taste. It seemed this was to at least slightly eliminate discrimination against certain classes and jobs preferred for raids or dungeons.

“Hmm…”

After checking the sub-attribute skill trees and ultimates for each class, Han Jiho unhesitatingly chose ‘Vitalis,’ the Supporter position class. The option to play a class other than a healer or supporter did not exist for him.

Vitalis’s basic ability was ‘Blessing of Light,’ a single-target recovery skill, and its ultimate was a crazy Area of Effect (AoE) skill that increased attack power and recovery by thirty percent. It was a complex class that combined a healer and a supporter.

Additionally, for the second sub-job, there were ‘Sun Arbiter,’ which had solar-attribute AoE attack skills, and ‘Sun Guardian,’ which had evolved buff skills.

The one that caught Han Jiho’s eye was ‘Sun Arbiter,’ which possessed powerful attack skills.

This was because it was his hobby and specialty to go around cracking enemies’ heads open while providing both heals and damage.

Having chosen his job, Han Jiho completed the customization to give off a clean feeling and finally entered his three-syllable name, ‘Han Jiho,’ into the nickname input field. His name was also the nickname he had used consistently from childhood until now.

However, when he pressed enter, what greeted Han Jiho was a notification window saying, ‘This nickname is already in use.’

Seeing that, Han Jiho furrowed his brows. He had wondered if this would happen, but it seemed this game, unlike XenoForce, did not allow the creation of duplicate nicknames.

So, after thinking for a moment, Han Jiho tried entering ‘LeeJiho,’ and when that also showed as a duplicate, he thought, to hell with it, and entered ‘Han Jiho1.’ But even that was a duplicate.

So this time, he tried entering ‘Han Jiho2.’ But this was also a duplicate, and even when he tried ‘Han Jiho3,’ the result remained the same.

Han Jiho rolled his tongue inside his mouth while staring at the screen with a displeased face.

Ha. To think there were this many bastards with the same name.

Han Jiho4, duplicate. Han Jiho5, duplicate. Han Jiho6, duplicate. Han Jiho7, duplicate. Han Jiho8, duplicate…

“This son of a…”

Fine. Let’s see how far this goes.

Muttering curses he didn’t even use often, Han Jiho tapped away at the keyboard feverishly, finally finding a non-duplicate nickname on his 98th attempt.

Now his nickname was ‘HanJiHo98.’