1: Glitch in the System

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About ten years after a game is released, players become so skilled that they start exhibiting bizarre behaviors

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About ten years after a game is released, players become so skilled that they start exhibiting bizarre behaviors.

Around that time, with no new content, players began doing strange things like trying to defeat bosses while wearing only underwear, or speedrunning dungeons, to the point of exhausting all available content.

The most extreme players even touch upon what is commonly known as 'trash characters,' which no one else dares to play...

That's exactly the kind of player I am.

The game, 'Emberfall Frontier.'

Originally released as a female-oriented dating simulation game, it became uniquely popular among male players due to its splendid combat style and endless content, featuring an innumerable number of characters to play.

There were characters that were both easy to use and performed exceptionally well, and then there were characters with such extreme difficulties that even players with ten years of experience couldn't handle them, performing terribly.

That's right.

I am the type of gamer who has been playing the character 'Val Ashbluff,' a character with extreme difficulty, terrible performance, and more weaknesses than strengths, with no clear reason for existing, for ten years.

In the world of Emberfall Frontier, where everything is made of magic and everyone can use it conveniently, Val Ashbluff is the only character set to not use magic, making him not only unpopular but treated as a background extra with no presence.

Of course, Val Ashbluff isn't entirely incapable of using magic.

He can use just one spell, the 'Blink' spell.

The Blink spell, while fundamentally learnable by any mage, had such a long cooldown, massive mana consumption, and a staggering 2-second immobilization penalty after use that hardly anyone bothered using it.

But that isn't all.

The basic 'Blink' ability teleports the user to a 'random' distance between 3 meters and 10 meters, in a 'random' direction.

If you were unlucky, you could end up buried in the ground or stuck in a ceiling or wall, dying instantly.

So, Val Ashbluff is a character that can't use any other magic except for the abandoned trash skill 'Blink.'

Of course, there is a merit to this.

Val Ashbluff is set to have trained 'Blink' to its extreme. He can adjust the direction to the front, fix the distance, and the 2-second immobilization is gone. Additionally, he doesn't have a mana stat, so there's no need to worry about mana consumption.

But that's it.

Even with the improvements, 'Blink' is still essentially a trash skill that can be used slightly better.

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