Yoo and Jin-hwan’s escort, a female knight, shared the same bewildered thought.
Their confusion was understandable. Baek and Jin-hwan had just looked at each other and spoken, completely out of the blue.
“Didn’t we come here to meet the visitor?”
“Aren’t we the ones who came to visit?”
As Yoo and the knight struggled to make sense of the exchange, Baek tried to calm his racing heart and focus on the girl before him. Jin-hwan seemed to be in a similar state, her expression a whirlwind of shock and embarrassment.
What? Why is SolarFlare here?
The girl, Jin-hwan, was so strikingly beautiful that the word felt inadequate. And the server’s second-ranked player, SolarFlare, should have absolutely nothing to do with his fiancée. Yet the moment their eyes met, her player name had exploded in his mind. It wasn't a guess; it was a certainty, an absolute gut feeling. More importantly, her reaction mirrored his own.
Could she really be SolarFlare?
The idea was dizzying, but not impossible. After all, he, Park Hyun-woo, the player known as CrimsonFang, had become Baek Yu-sung.
“Ahem, uh, well. Excuse me for a moment,” Baek managed to mumble.
Jin-hwan mumbled something inarticulate in response, her eyes darting away from his.
“First… please, have a seat.”
Yoo and the knight tilted their heads at the palpable awkwardness between the two, but said nothing. Yoo moved to pour the freshly prepared tea as Baek and Jin-hwan continued to steal hesitant glances at each other. He couldn't be the only one feeling this. She had to have felt that same jolt of recognition. If she really was SolarFlare… the situation was a catastrophe, but at least it would be an understandable one.
“CrimsonFang,” Baek whispered, his voice trembling slightly with the sheer absurdity of saying it aloud.
Her reaction was immediate. Jin-hwan flinched, her eyes widening in confirmation.
“SolarFlare,” she breathed back, her voice just as quiet. As Yoo and the knight leaned forward in confusion, Baek pressed his advantage. “The one and only.”
Concern was now etched plainly on the faces of their chaperones. Why were their charges suddenly acting so bizarrely?
Baek couldn’t spare them a single thought. He locked eyes with Jin-hwan again, his gaze intense. Crazy! Are you really SolarFlare?!
Her expression screamed a similar question back at him.
Baek took a deep, steadying breath. He wanted to bombard her with questions—how did this happen, when did she become Jin-hwan—but Yoo and the knight were watching their every move. He had to find another way.
“Coop reset 9:00 3-9,” Baek said, his tone casual but his words precise.
In Chronicles of Valor 2, the co-op mode reset every night at midnight. The phrase was code. 9 o’clock referred to the nine o’clock direction from the mansion’s entrance, and 3-9 meant three squares across and nine down on the map grid—eighteen meters from the coordinates of the garden gate. Put together, his message was simple: Let’s meet at midnight in the corner of my garden.
An average Chronicles of Valor 2 player would have been stumped. But for a hardcore veteran like SolarFlare, it should have been perfectly clear.
And it was. Jin-hwan gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. “Roger that,” she whispered. It was a radio term for “understood,” one of her most distinctive phrases in the game.
“Ahem, I’m glad to see you’re in good health,” Baek announced, standing up abruptly. “It’s getting late, so I’ll see you next time.”
“Yes, it was a pleasure,” Jin-hwan replied, rising to her feet as well. “I look forward to our next meeting.”
They couldn’t have a proper conversation here. With a time and place established, their only option was to end this encounter as quickly as possible. As Baek and Jin-hwan exchanged stiff farewells, Yoo and the knight were once again thrown into confusion.
“Eh? You’re leaving already?” Yoo’s usually stoic face was a mask of pure surprise.
But the deal was done. Baek offered an awkward laugh and saw SolarFlare—no, Jin-hwan—out of the room. She walked with a quick, purposeful stride, an equally strained smile fixed on her face.
“Young master? What on earth…?” Yoo began, trailing off as the drawing-room door closed.
What was going on? Baek wasn’t entirely sure himself. But one thing was certain: he had found an ally, someone who would believe his story without question. Staring at the door Jin-hwan had just disappeared through, Baek clenched his fist.
Baek Yu-sung’s father, Count Baek, was away on a northern expedition along with his heir and Baek’s older brother, Baek Do-hyun. It was a small-scale monster subjugation, almost an annual event, and they would be gone for a month. With most of the household vassals accompanying them, the already quiet estate was now nearly silent.
After finishing a solitary dinner in his room, Baek waited, the minutes stretching into an eternity. Finally, the clock struck twelve. Midnight. The deepest part of the night.
Baek slipped out of his room and hurried toward the garden. Though it was technically summer, the night air in the northern territories carried a distinct chill.
I hope she can find the spot, he thought, positioning himself under a large, spreading tree—the designated meeting place. He glanced up at the night sky, his breath catching in his throat.
It’s really Chilseong-gye.
Two moons, twin goddesses, hung in the ink-black sky, bathing the world in a silver and blue light. They were infinitely more beautiful and mysterious than they had ever appeared on a monitor.
A faint sound broke the silence. Baek tensed, his eyes snapping toward the high garden wall. A figure was perched on top, a silhouette against the twin moons.
“CrimsonFang?” a small voice called out.
The figure was a red-haired girl in a simple brown hood, pulled low over her face like a monk’s cowl.
“SolarFlare,” Baek replied, his voice equally low.
With a whisper of magic, Jin-hwan vaulted over the wall, landing softly on the grass. She pulled back her hood and looked at Baek, her face a mixture of a dozen conflicting emotions. They didn’t need any more proof.
“This is really happening,” she said, her voice shaking slightly.
“I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you,” Baek said, and he meant it. He had thought he was completely alone in this new world. To see a familiar—no, not a face, but a familiar soul—was an indescribable relief.
“When did it happen for you?” he asked.
“Two days ago. You?”
“Same. Just woke up and… here I was.”
They squatted under the tree, a comfortable silence falling between them as they took a moment to process everything.
It was Jin-hwan who spoke first. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be the guy? Why are you making a girl climb the wall to a man’s house?”
“Whoa, sexist much?” Baek shot back. “Besides, have you forgotten? I’m Baek Yu-sung. Gueumjulmaek. How am I supposed to climb a wall?” That wasn't the only thing he'd realized. "And since when were you a woman?"
“Since birth, you idiot.”
Baek blinked, rubbing his eyes as if that would change what he was hearing. “Wait… SolarFlare was a girl?”
“Was CrimsonFang a guy?” she retorted.
It made sense, he supposed. In the five years they’d competed for the top spot, they’d never once used voice chat. They only ever met as their in-game avatars, so there was no way to know the other’s real gender.
“That’s not what’s important right now,” Baek said, pushing the thought aside.
Jin-hwan nodded, though her brow was still furrowed. He was right. What mattered was that CrimsonFang was now Baek, SolarFlare was now Jin-hwan, and they were both trapped in the world of Chronicles of Valor 2.
Baek decided to establish the fundamentals. “So, for you too… it doesn’t feel like I’m in a game, it feels more like my past life was ‘CrimsonFang.’ It seems to be the same for you and ‘SolarFlare’?”
“Me too,” she confirmed. “It feels exactly like that.”
The distinction, though subtle, was critical. It decided whether or not they could ever return. If they were truly reincarnated in Chilseong-gye, the world of Chronicles of Valor 2, then there was no ‘Log Out’ button. Where would they even go? This was their life now.
Neither Baek nor Jin-hwan dwelled on that terrifying thought. There were more immediate problems to solve.
“The Dae-sohwan,” they said in unison.
The cataclysmic event where angels and demons descended upon the world. At first, Baek had only thought about getting strong enough to survive it. But that wasn't enough. They had to stop the Dae-sohwan itself, the event that would bring about the world’s destruction.
It sounded like an impossible, almost laughable goal. The arrival of the angels and demons was the fixed destiny of Chilseong-gye. No matter how much of a top-tier player he was, he could never do it alone.
But what if he wasn’t alone?
What if the server’s first and second-ranked players were in this together?
Baek Yu-sung and Jin-hwan Chae-won. Both were niche characters, far from the meta, but their choice of avatar was about more than just in-game performance now.
Jin-hwan offered a bitter smile. “A warrior and a wizard. Perfect for splitting the loot.”
Like any resource, the powerful artifacts and items in Chilseong-gye were finite. If they had both been the same class, they would have constantly been at odds, competing for the same gear and slowing each other’s growth. But as a warrior and a wizard, they could cover each other’s weaknesses and divide the world’s treasures between them.
“I never thought I’d be in a party with you after five years of rivalry,” Baek mused.
“I know, right? This world is so weird.” To be reincarnated in a game was absurd enough, but to be reincarnated alongside his eternal rival, who also happened to be his fiancée, was beyond belief.
“Anyway,” Baek said, getting back to the point. “I’d like to ask for your cooperation.”
“Of course,” Jin-hwan agreed instantly. “But first, we have to treat my… well, your Gueumjulmaek.”
“Doesn’t it heal automatically with an event?” she asked. In the game, if you started as Baek Yu-sung and survived for six months, an event would trigger where Count Jin-hwan sent the cure to Count Baek. It meant that if he just waited patiently, the Gueumjulmaek would be healed completely.
Baek clicked his tongue. “And that’s why you’ll always be in second place.”
“Hey, be honest,” she shot back, stung. “You’ve never actually played as Baek, have you?”
“Of course I have. How do you think I know about the cure? But are you seriously suggesting we just sit around and wait for half a year?”
Six months. One hundred and eighty days. Four thousand, three hundred and twenty hours. It was an unacceptable waste of time.
Jin-hwan’s frown deepened at his point. “Then what’s the plan?”
“We cure it ourselves, long before that,” Baek said, a glint in his eye. “Using every trick in the book.”
A way that only players like them, who had gone beyond hardcore and mastered every exploit the game had to offer, could possibly manage.
“Come closer.” Baek beckoned to her, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It starts like this…”