Dusk (BL Light Novel)

Engravings are a socket system commonly found in other games, similar to enchants or runes. By using Engraving Scrolls, players can increase specific stats to either boost their damage output or compensate for lacking stats. In simple terms, they’re like nutritional supplements — meant to provide what’s missing. Additionally, once certain stats reach specific thresholds, the effect color changes, turning these into valuable cosmetic items.
In Dusk, each character has a whopping 65 sockets. This means that even a tank or healer can theoretically deal as much damage as a damage dealer if they invest solely in offensive stats. However, considering skill stances and other mechanics, the actual effectiveness of such a build is incredibly low, so it’s not recommended.

Back in the early days of the game, I’d seen a few Defender players who invested solely in offensive stats. While they hit hard, they couldn’t withstand incoming damage and ended up dying quickly.
Originally, the Engraving system was introduced to provide users with more ways to customize their play style. However, due to a miscalculation by the dev team, the drop rate of Engraving Scrolls couldn’t keep up with the consumption rate, creating a severe imbalance.
As a result, scroll prices skyrocketed, and unless you were an incredibly wealthy player, the standard practice was to focus solely on Attack Power, Critical Hit, Defense Penetration, or Defense.

So why would Retaking a Class have switched to an Accuracy Set?
It was undoubtedly because of the Awakening Passive.
Otherwise, there was no reason for a Commander, who already had top-tier gear and didn’t need more Accuracy, to abandon Defense and Recovery to invest in Accuracy.
The Awakening Passive is a skill activated when a certain number of Engraving Scrolls are equipped. Despite its grandiose name, it’s essentially a “nice-to-have” skill rather than a game-changer. The specifics vary by class, but the general effects are similar:

If you equip an Attack Speed set, you gain a 12% chance of dealing an additional hit.
If you equip a Critical Hit set, you gain a 12% chance of dealing 1.6x additional damage.
As a general rule, unless you’re some kind of eccentric, it’s better to invest in stable stat distribution rather than aiming for a vague, situational passive skill. Even a weirdo like Retaking a Class, who was known for his unconventional builds, had always focused on Defense.

But now he suddenly changed it all overnight? Where did he get the money for that? And how is he planning to recover it?
Various thoughts ran through my mind, but it was already too late to question Gang Jaegyung’s financial state. Instead, I minimized the game screen and opened the search bar, typing in “Medic Accuracy Set.”
Dozens of posts from various websites popped up. I didn’t bother with any lengthy posts. Instead, I clicked on a screenshot that clearly displayed the skill description.

[Adaptive Enhancement - Level 45 / Passive Skill]
Condition - Equip 15/25/35 Accuracy Engravings
Virus-type skills applied to the target will remain despite being targeted by cleansing skills with a probability of 33/66.6/100%.
Additionally, the mutation probability of virus-type skills is increased by 3%.

The moment I read the skill description, a chill ran down my spine.
Now I knew exactly why Retaking a Class had switched to an Accuracy Set.
With a bitter sense of foreboding, I typed the name of a skill that hadn’t crossed my mind in a long time into the search bar. Then, I clicked on a post detailing the recent balance patch.

Title: Finally
Author: [Jeoja] Storm
[Contagion - Level 45 / Active Skill]
Skill Activation - Consumes 80 Mana every 2 seconds while active.
When a hostile user with a virus-type skill approaches another hostile user, there is a high probability of transmitting the virus.
The closer the distance, the higher the transmission probability.

Each time Contagion activates, a Contagion stack is added.
At 300 stacks, the Plague skill becomes available.
[Plague - Level 45 / Offensive Skill]
Activation Condition: 300 Contagion Stacks

Inflicts additional damage to all hostile users based on the number of viruses they carry.
Inflicts all viruses applied to the caster to all hostile users within 100m who are not already infected.
Each time Plague activates, a Plague stack is added.

At 1,000 stacks, the Genocide skill becomes available.
[Genocide - Level 45 / Offensive Skill]
Activation Condition: 1,000 Plague Stacks
Deals massive damage to all hostile users based on the number of viruses they carry and removes all viruses.

Upon activation, all Stress debuff stacks on the caster are reset.
F*ck. That goddamn Genocide skill got nerfed hard.
(Comments: 47)

Is that really a nerf? I can’t even wrap my head around the 1,000 stacks.
└ Not really.
└ Seems fair.
Wow, lol. They really hit it hard. Who’s going to use it now?
└ The ones who are obsessed with it will still use it. It’s just balanced now.
└ Yeah, but every Medic Commander in every server has already abandoned it.
Now it scales based on the number of viruses, huh? Cleansing got buffed too, so even if Genocide activates, we can survive it.

This is how it should’ve been.
└ Yeah, 100 Plague stacks and 500 Genocide stacks were too easy to accumulate. Instead of faction wars, it was just Medics racing to see who could stack faster.
True. It was just Medic Commanders and their lackeys fighting each other.
But honestly, players had already started keeping their distance from each other, so using Genocide was getting harder. Now with this nerf, there’s really no reason to use it. Restart is way better… Why waste Mana on Genocide?
└ Still, 500 stacks was ridiculous.

Wow, they even reduced the Mana cost from 3 seconds to 2 seconds. Looks like they were determined to bury Genocide for good.
└ Lol, I only found out about the 2-second change from this comment.
└ Same here. It was too much.
80 Mana every 2 seconds means 2,400 Mana per minute. To trigger Genocide, you’d need at least 5 minutes. High-tier Medic Commanders have around 14,000 Mana, but between using DoTs, healing, and defensive skills, they’re not going to have enough to pull off a Genocide.
└ It’s going to be a razor-thin line — either you barely manage to use it or you don’t.
└ If Contagion deactivates, the stacks reset, right?
└ Yeah.
└ Wow, if it were me, I wouldn’t bother using it.
… (More comments) …

 
Genocide.
Once hailed as the crown jewel of mass-scale PvP battles, it was the Medic’s offensive ultimate skill.
The reason it’s spoken of in the past tense is that its absurdly broken performance led to multiple nerfs, along with buffs to the Priest’s counter skill, Cleansing. On top of that, players who’d been thoroughly wrecked by it eventually figured out how to counter it, and now it was practically a forgotten skill.

Of course, if used correctly, it could still be devastating. But to prevent that from happening, players had learned to keep their distance during faction wars, spreading out instead of bunching up. As a result, even if Contagion was activated, it would end up draining the user’s mana without achieving much, leading to a quick death or running out of mana before they could deal any real damage.
And given that the Medic’s other healing-oriented ultimate was just as effective, there was no compelling reason to use Genocide.
That’s why it didn’t make any sense for a Medic like Commander Jojun to be using Genocide.
If I had to force a reason why he’d switch to the Harmonizer stance, it would be because the mana recovery in Harmonizer stance is much easier to maintain than in the Slayer stance, making the rigid mana requirements for Genocide more manageable.

But even so, he was still a healer, so his offensive power would be limited. Even if he did manage to gather enough mana to activate Genocide, the damage would be enough to finish off low-health targets at best. It wouldn’t be devastating enough to warrant the risk.
But then again, who was the opponent?
It was Retaking a Class.
If it was him, there had to be a reason behind it.
I placed my hands on the keyboard to prepare for the worst.

[Alliance Commander] Honeybread: The opposing Commander Jojun is using an Accuracy Set. Any healers here with experience dealing with Accuracy Set Medics?
The alliance chat, which had been relatively quiet, lit up with a few responses. Not many players had experience with Accuracy Sets, as they were rarely used to begin with.
[Alliance] Honeybread: How effective is the debuff resistance, from your experience?
[Alliance] Honeybread: At 66.6%?
[Alliance] SamsungCider: It’s strong. Debuffs barely get removed.
[Alliance] Gaze: With old Cleansing, you’d still have around 4 debuffs remaining.
[Alliance] SamsungCider: Yep, exactly what Gaze said.

66.6% was working more effectively than I’d anticipated. That was going to be a problem.
After some thought, ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) I decided to rework the party composition. I opened the party list, rearranged the members, and continued speaking in the alliance chat.
[Alliance Commander] Honeybread: We need to increase the number of Cleansing teams.
[Alliance Commander] Honeybread: If anyone can swap to a healer, whisper me with your gear info, and I’ll assign you to a Cleansing team.
[Alliance Commander] Honeybread: Cleansing teams, you’re going to have to spam Cleansing harder than usual this time.
[Alliance Commander] Honeybread: And everyone, keep as much distance as possible while dealing damage to avoid getting infected.
[Alliance Commander] Honeybread: Otherwise, Genocide will trigger.

Adding more healers wouldn’t necessarily guarantee a defense against Genocide.
And if it was Gang Jaegyung, he might just be pretending to use the Accuracy Set to mislead us, only to switch back to his regular build at the last second.
Or, he might be planning to use Genocide to whittle down our health and then finish us off with Apocalypse, the Priest skill that applies a [Death] debuff to targets under 40% HP.
In any case, even if he did use Genocide, the damage would only be lethal to cloth-wearing classes with weak defense, and even then, it would only shave off around 70–80% of their health. So, it wasn’t exactly a conventional strategy.

Damn it. He was really making things complicated.
I was going to have to rework the entire party setup now.