In the world of Satisfy, numbers were the only absolute truth. As the fifth-ranked player in the unified standings, Yura lived by those numbers.
She knew that the average Black Magician was level 53—the lowest of all combat classes due to their abysmal defense and specialized, often slow, attack patterns.
But Yura was the exception that redefined the rule. Since the day she first logged in, she had hunted alone, a solitary queen of the macabre who traded the safety of a party for the absolute precision of her own mana control.
She was a genius of positioning, a virtuoso of the dark arts who had just reached the monumental milestone of Level 230.
With that level came the prize she had coveted for months: [Diamond Barrier], an A-grade defensive spell that finally patched the structural weakness of her class.
To finalize the skill, she had traveled to a remote Yatan Temple, seeking the solitude her fame usually denied her.
She had expected a quiet ritual of faith. Instead, she was met with a siren call of blood.
[Hidden Quest: Guardian of the Temple]
Difficulty: S
Description: Defend the dignity of God Yatan against the blasphemous intruders.
"An S-grade quest..." Yura whispered, her calm eyes sharpening. She had only encountered three in her entire career. The rewards—the title of 'Guardian'—were massive. Intelligence +60, Health +1,000. It was a jackpot delivered to her doorstep.
Yura didn't rush. She dispersed her mana like a sonar pulse, a high-level detection technique that mapped the temple in seconds.
'Two intruders,' she noted. 'One NPC, third-advancement, high-level. One player... ID: Arthur.'
She looked at Arthur through the shadows of the ritual chamber. He wore no plate armor. His equipment was basic leather armour, almost insulting. According to her internal database, he looked like a Level 160 warrior.
'A level 160 player triggering an S-grade quest?' Yura's analytical mind whirred. 'The NPC Doran is the primary threat. I'll eliminate the player first to remove the variable, then focus my mana on the assassin.'
She calculated the strike with the cold efficiency of a supercomputer. A level 160 warrior without specialized gear should have roughly 23,000 to 32,000 HP. Magic defense? Negligible. One-fifth of her mana in a concentrated fire-strike should result in an instant kill.
She fired.
The crimson flame roared toward Arthur, a streak of lethal beauty. Yura was already turning her gaze toward Doran, expecting the grey light of a player's death to flicker in her periphery.
Clang.
The sound of steel meeting magic wasn't the soft hiss of a kill; it was the sharp, authoritative ring of a parry. Arthur stood unmoved, his greatsword humming with a silvery light.
'He... parried it?'
Yura's heart skipped a beat. Her calculations had never been wrong. Not once in Satisfy. To survive that hit, his stats would have to be nonsensical for his level. Or his skill priority was high enough to override her magic's destructive power.
Arthur didn't charge. He began to walk.
Step. Step. Step.
He moved at a leisurely pace, his greatsword resting on his shoulder. It was a casual, agonizingly slow approach that screamed arrogance.
It was a silent message: I am giving you all the time in the world. Use your best magic. It won't matter.
For the first time in years, Yura felt a spark of genuine fury. Her self-esteem, built on a foundation of being the best, was being trampled by a man with a plain ID and leather Armour.
"Great god of the darkness," Yura began to chant, her voice trembling with repressed rage. "Fill this place with darkness and plant fear in the enemies' hearts..."
The basement plummeted into a supernatural obsidian. The "Fear" debuff from her [Dark Storm] was enough to make the NPC Doran hesitate, his breath hitching.
But Arthur? Arthur didn't even break his stride. He walked through the magical darkness as if it were a spring mist, his resistance stats seemingly ignoring the high-tier curse.
"Dark Storm!"
The silent, vacuum-like tempest erupted, tearing at the pillars and floor of the temple. It was a spell capable of leveling a fortress.
Arthur moved—not with the heavy clatter of a warrior, but with the grace of a butterfly. He danced between the crushing pressures of the storm, his eyes fixed on Yura.
Then, he stopped. He performed a slow, rhythmic movement with his blade.
"Pagma's Sword Dance — Restraint."
Yura gasped. An overwhelming, physical weight slammed into her. It wasn't just a stun; it was a spiritual suppression. Her mana flow stuttered. Her legs felt like they were cast in lead.
'An AoE movement restriction? At his level?'
She watched in a daze as Arthur paved a way through her followers.
He was a scythe through wheat. Every movement he made was more efficient, more lethal than the last. Behind him, Doran was a ragdoll, barely surviving her earlier storm, but Arthur remained pristine.
Suddenly, a world-wide notification she had seen earlier echoed in her mind.
[A player has achieved the Legendary class: Pagma's Successor.]
She looked at Arthur's movements. The grace. The power. The name of his skills.
'Pagma's Sword Dance... Pagma's Successor...'
'Is he... the Legend?'
The thought sent a chill down her spine. She had worked harder than anyone. She played solo, she never took shortcuts, and she had clawed her way to the 5th rank through sheer merit.
To see a "Legend" appear and make a mockery of her hard work was a bitter pill to swallow.
"I refuse to submit," she hissed, her pride flaring.
She cast [Shroud of Darkness], her most reliable stun and slow. She didn't expect it to kill him, only to buy time for her next big spell.
[Target has Resisted!]
'Impossible! Just how broken is a Legendary class!?' Yura's eyes widened. Status resistance on that level was unheard of.
Arthur closed the gap. He was inches away now. Yura could see the golden rings in his ruby eyes—the mark of someone who looked down upon the world.
"Sorry, beautiful, but time's up," Arthur said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "I hope we'll meet again in better circumstances."
"Pagma's Sword Dance — Kill!"
The world turned white. A terrifying, concentrated pillar of silver energy erupted from his blade. Yura closed her eyes, preparing for the Level -2 penalty and the loss of her quest.
The power was absolute; at this distance, there was no Diamond Barrier that could hold it.
BOOM.
The air exploded, but the pain never came.
Yura opened her eyes. The ritual altar behind her had been pulverized into dust. The black magicians to her left and right had been erased. But she was untouched. Not a single point of her HP had dropped.
Arthur stood a few feet away, sheathing his sword. He looked at her with a complicated expression—not of victory, but of a peer acknowledging another.
"As a ranker, it's very bad for you to drop your level, so I won't kill you," Arthur said, his voice carrying over the settling dust. "Besides, I'm also a Korean. I can't exactly drag our top ranker off the leaderboard, can I?"
He turned his back to her, heading toward the entrance and left.
[Notification: The intruders are retreating. You have defended the temple.]
Yura stood in the wreckage of the basement, her breath coming in shallow gasps. The "Success" message on her screen felt like a brand of shame. He had spared her. He had looked at the 5th-ranked player in the world and seen someone who needed his sympathy.
"Did he... yield the quest to me?"
She watched his departing back, a strange mixture of humiliation and intense curiosity burning in her chest. Her pride, which she had spent years forging into a diamond-hard shield, lay in shattered pieces at her feet.
Arthur. Pagma's Successor.
For the first time in her life, Yura didn't care about the rankings. She didn't care about the level cap. She only wanted to know one thing: who was the man who had the power to kill her, but chose to give her a "victory" instead?
That day, the 'Blood Witch' didn't lose a level, but she lost something far more precious: her indifference to the rest of the world.