Dusk (BL Light Novel)

[Combat] You have taken 2,005 damage from Retaking a Class's damage-over-time effect.

[Combat] You have dealt 7,684 damage to Retaking a Class using the skill Will's Punishment.
[Combat] You have slain Retaking a Class with the skill Will's Punishment.
[System] You have defeated the Jeopa faction’s Supreme Commander, Retaking a Class.

[System] You have earned 2,820 Fame.
[Race] Bia faction’s Supreme Commander, Honeybread, has defeated Jeopa faction’s Supreme Commander, Retaking a Class.
[Combat] The buff effect of the skill Corrupted Instinct has ended.

Honeybread versus Retaking, Round One.
I won the first round easily. Retaking kept making mistakes that were unlike him—he went for some obvious mind games, misclicked his combo skills, and miscalculated the DoT tick duration, wasting damage. It felt like I was dealing with any other random player—I took him down effortlessly. Normally, he wasn’t this sloppy, but I guess he got a little worked up with all the forum drama and the rankings going public.
Weird. He’s never the type to get so flustered over something like this. I’d heard his stream earlier, and he didn’t seem too invested in the whole situation—but maybe it really did get to him?

As much as I was worried, something felt... off. Honestly… he’s not someone who lets emotions mess up his play. I circled Retaking’s corpse a few times. Why does this feel so ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) weird? I couldn’t make sense of this unease gnawing at me, so I shoved it aside and calmly pressed the keyboard to type something to provoke him.
[Normal] Honeybread: Even if you split that rank 11 in half, you’d still be rank 1… Grats on being #1 twice^^
[Normal] Honeybread: Oh right, you’re rank 1 in your class too. So that makes three times.

[Normal] Honeybread: Top Medic, Overall Rank 11, another #1—Triple Crown^^7
After dropping that in chat, I stepped away from his corpse and wandered the field with a slightly uneasy heart. Retaking’s still human—he’s allowed to be mad over this kind of thing, right? I tried to shake off the unsettling feeling as I waited for him to respawn and return from the Jeopa resurrection point.
But no matter how many Jeopa players I killed while waiting, Retaking never showed up. Normally, I’d have assumed he was en route and just got into a fight with other Bia players, so I’d keep slaying Jeopa as I waited—but today, something felt different.

Did he rage-quit?
He’s not the type to bail just from losing a match… But with how off his gameplay was earlier, maybe something else came up. Maybe he did rage-quit.
He’d run into a Jeopa duo and gotten killed, and on stream, he’d looked visibly pissed. What if I just failed to catch the signs? Maybe he was intentionally playing like crap to mess with the people comparing us on the forums—giving them a big “fuck you”—and now he’s off cackling somewhere. Or maybe some asshole in the stream chat picked a fight, and he’s too busy going off on them to play. A million theories came to mind. Knowing Retaking, any of those could be true—except maybe the first one.

Just as I finished killing a duo and reflexively checked my Fame score, I saw a red triangle moving fast on the mini-map. I turned my screen—and there it was. A nickname I was damn happy to see. Guess he wasn’t sulking over one loss after all.
But something was weird. The guy who always wore the crisp, white Supreme Commander uniform, adorned with elegant, high-end accessories… had shown up wearing a ridiculous outfit.
A bright red fuzzy stinger hat, a bright red fuzzy sweater, and—get this—pants shaped like bright red testicles (ω). No shoes. And on his back, he had the massive banner of the anti-god faction Aihtetas, the Jeopa’s symbol of rebellion.
All in all: he looked grotesque.

Was that why he took so long? To put that cursed outfit together? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Nobody wears that crap in a field PvP game. I mean, seriously, who deliberately picks the loudest, most eye-scorching colors to wear into combat?
[Guild] Ceylontea: Wow, first time I’ve seen someone wear that into PvP besides me.
Besides that guy.

Ceylontea—Moon Sunhwa—I’ve known him since elementary school, over 15 years now, and even after all that time I still don’t get his freakish fashion sense. And he’s a fashion design major, for fuck’s sake.
[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: Which lunatic?
[Guild] Ceylontea: lol... lunatic = Retaking

[Guild] Honeybread: ?
[Guild] soloist: ?
[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: Ah.

[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: Our beloved guildmaster, haha
[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: I meant “mad” as in charming mad~
That question mark was for Ceylontea.

[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: Uh
[Guild] Ceylontea: Let’s hear how you recover from this.
[Guild] RomanticCat: Spicy drama during boring fishing hours.

[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: More charming~
[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: That’s what I meant.
[Guild] soloist: lmao

[Guild] soloist: lmao
[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: more charming^^d
[Guild] Ceylontea: 😂😂😂 absolute verbal gymnastics lol

[Guild] Summoner: 😂😂😂😂😂 definitely scrambled for a dictionary just now
[Guild] EveryNameWasTaken: hehe oO(That was almost bad)
[Guild] soloist: Our guild’s turning into a sex shop. Might as well wear a dildo next raid.

[Guild] RomanticCat: Solo, please…
Same chaotic guild chat as always. I decided to ignore it.
Still, why was Retaking dressed like this when he normally had perfectly good fashion sense? Was this his way of declaring revenge? An indirect expression of rage? Or some kind of high-level psychological warfare? Whatever it was—it was deranged.

The unnervingly grotesque version of Retaking had now closed the distance to within 20 meters. And with that, Round Two began.
This time, he seemed calmer—probably aware he’d lost earlier because he was too heated. But there was one big difference: he wasn’t managing the Medic-exclusive debuff called Stress at all.
As a Medic, certain attack skills or spamming healing skills would stack the Stress debuff. For each stack, your attack power, defense, and penetration dropped by 2%. The penalty worsened with more stacks, so managing Stress was essential in PvP, where every stat point mattered.

Retaking was the kind of player who never let Stress stack past 3 unless absolutely necessary. So when I realized he wasn’t managing it at all—I found it really strange.
Then suddenly, that blazing-red bastard used a dodge skill and shot backwards like a seasoned pickled radish rolling off a cutting board.
I’d been hitting him with my basic combo, too confused by his lack of Stress control to bother with any real strategy. What the hell was he scheming? Was he baiting something with this mind game?

Whatever—it felt like a gift, so I immediately hit my Capture Skill. By now, he had to be sitting on at least four stacks of Stress. The only dodge left was Emergency Evade—a skill that adds two more Stress stacks when used. It’s for actual emergencies only.
Using it now would spike his total stat penalties to over 12%, including defense. Even if he dodged my capture, the next hit would be worse for him.
There’s no way Retaking would use Emergency Evade.

But Retaking… used Emergency Evade.
[Combat] Retaking a Class has dodged Enforcer’s Capture Skill using Emergency Evade.
[Combat] Raindrop That Cannot Return has been hit by Enforcer’s Capture.

[Combat] Raindrop That Cannot Return resisted Enforcer’s Capture effect.
Because he dodged, the elite monster Raindrop That Cannot Return standing behind him got hit by my Capture instead. And of all the mobs that could’ve noticed me—it had to be an elite. Immune to stuns from capture skills and packing enough HP that I couldn’t deal with it quickly.