# Prologue
[Is Trash-tier Warrior Kim for real?]
[LOL]
[The newbie crusher strikes again.]
[Can’t wait for F2P1 to show up.]
[What’s F2P1?]
[Free-to-play Rank 1.]
[Rank 1 as F2P? Is that even possible?]
[No, he’s Rank 1 among F2P players.]
I left a comment too.
[Your female character’s build is shit.]
Players like this are easy prey for me.
Those who’ve just entered the ranking battles.
Sure, they throw a ton of money into the game, forming teams full of SSR characters. But so what?
If their equipment, traits, and levels aren’t maxed out, they’ll hit a wall.
[Is this a joke? I spent over a million won, and I still lose to a free-to-play player?]
[Then why don’t you play for 10,000 hours.]
[What the hell is 10,000 hours?]
[F2P1 posted proof recently.]
[That guy’s a total game addict. Who spends 10,000 hours on a trash game like this?]
[Is he insane?]
[That’s how he got to 9th overall.]
[Want to beat F2P1? Simple. Just spend a ton of money.]
[Agreed. Lost after spending? The answer is more spending!]
[Even if you just pull a Heavenly Demon, you can crush F2P1 easily.]
Ugh!
The Heavenly Demon!
That damn Heavenly Demon!
I closed the message board and entered the Colosseum.
I figured I’d be up against another team of female characters, but I was wrong.
Their frontline was the Heavenly Demon.
The midline had Leviathan.
In the rear was Merlin.
Supporting them was Gabriel.
It was the typical god-tier, zero-tier team setup.
With the characters I have, I couldn’t beat that team even in a thousand lifetimes.
Maybe, if they were still in the early stages of building their roster and hadn’t leveled up their characters fully, I’d have a chance…
[IroncladMaster] F2P1. Nice to see you.
Of all people, it had to be this guy.
Rank #1.
A heavy spender I’ve never managed to beat.
His username screams “old man,” and his control isn’t anything special, but his spending is the real deal.
[NoPayAllDie] Please, have mercy. No female character team this time?
[IroncladMaster] I’ll just set it to auto-play.
Ugh, seriously annoying.
Long story short, I lost.
I pride myself on my control skills, but nothing stands up against someone who’s spent tens of millions of won.
My Warrior Kim, painstakingly fed Nectar to limit-break from Normal to SSR, got torn apart like paper by the Heavenly Demon.
[IroncladMaster] GG.
“Argh!”
Wham!
I slammed my head into the wall.
“Damn pay-to-win game! Ughhh!”
Should I start spending money?
Maybe just 1 million won?
I don’t even need the Heavenly Demon.
Just getting one of the top three SSR warriors—Baek Soryn, Kali, or Janet—would be enough.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
But no, I gave up.
I’ve already sunk 10,000 hours into this.
10,000 hours!
At this point, my pride won’t let me spend money.
Not that I’d win with a little bit of spending, anyway.
Arcane Seoul is your typical P2W (pay-to-win) game.
The moment winning became more about how much you pay instead of strategy and control, my loss was inevitable.
‘I’ll wait for the next patch.’
Arcane Seoul gets regular major updates.
World-ending events, dimensional rifts tearing the universe apart—things like that.
The in-game world becomes a total mess, and with every patch comes new characters, dramatically shaking up the meta.
‘I can still take down the Heavenly Demon.’
There are a few traits from the upcoming patch I’ve been keeping an eye on.
Sure, it’ll mean sinking in more hours, but time is the one thing I have in abundance.
With that, my daily grind was done.
Lying on my bed, I tapped my smartphone.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky with a rare pull today…”
The odds of getting anything good from the free gacha are abysmal.
They say you can pull SSRs, but I’ve never seen it happen.
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
As usual, the phone gave a light buzz.
“Haaa…”
I let out a big yawn.
It’s always the same. A brief vibration, a quick flash of light, and then a bunch of Normal-grade junk.
I haven’t bothered expecting anything in ages.
Bzzt! Bzzzzzzzt!
Wait, what?
Something’s weird.
The vibration is lasting longer today.
And it’s much stronger too…
“Could it be?”
I reflexively sat up.
At the same time, the screen of my phone started shining brightly.
“C-could it be?”
White light.
No, this wasn’t just white.
It was white mixed with gold, with a metallic sheen—
Platinum!
“Ooooooh!”
That color I’d only seen on streamers’ broadcasts!
The one that only shows up when you blow cash like water!
I stared wide-eyed at the screen.
The radiant platinum shimmered, swirling into a rainbow, before finally settling and returning to normal.
And in the center of the screen, one card appeared.
Not the usual dainty, fragile female character, but a muscular male character standing with his hands behind his back, his black dragon-patterned robe billowing in the wind.
[SSR Heavenly Demon]
“Uwooooh!”
I dropped to my knees and let out a long wail.
The Heavenly Demon, the freaking Heavenly Demon!
The pinnacle of the warrior class!
The best of the best!
Top-tier among the top-tiers!
I can’t believe even I got lucky for once!
Warrior Kim?
That N-rank character I painstakingly limit-broke into SSR, my in-game avatar?
The SSR Warrior Kim series I specially raised to counter every famous character just so I could try to beat the natural SSRs?
None of that matters anymore!
With the Heavenly Demon, nothing else matters!
The Heavenly Demon is king!
“Waaaaah! Waaaaah!”
I rolled around on the floor for ages.
Bang, bang, bang!
The neighbor knocked on the wall, yelling about the noise, but I didn’t care. I kept bawling my eyes out, tears and snot streaming down my face, before finally calming down.
“Haa… haaah… haa…”
I gently stroked the screen of my smartphone.
There, in my mercenary lineup, were the countless identical faces of Warrior Kim.
“You did well.”
But now, it was time to say goodbye.
Tank Warrior Kim.
DPS Warrior Kim.
Glass cannon Warrior Kim.
Sniper Warrior Kim for targeting specific famous characters, 1, 2, 3.
Warrior Kim on auto-expeditions…
I fed them all into the Heavenly Demon to use as enhancement materials.
“Farewell.”
Do I regret it?
Not one bit.
I’ve climbed to 9th place in the rankings without spending a dime.
How many Kim the Warriors do you think I’ve sacrificed to get this far?
It was all worth it.
There will never be another day as happy as this.
With a smug grin, I drifted off to sleep.
I had no idea then.
That the next morning,
I’d wake up as Warrior Kim in the world of Arcane Seoul.
–TL Notes–
Hope you enjoyed this chapter. If you want to support me or give me feedback, you can do it at patreon.com/MattReading
Join my Discord! https://discord.gg/BWaP3AHHpt
Thanks for picking this up!
I don’t play these kinds of games? Is there something specific with female characters in these? Was a bit of an odd thing for mc to mention
People who play Gatcha games are basically just collecting Waifus. As such, their team consists of their best Waifus and not the best possible meta comp.