By Zephyria 
Anyway, after finishing their conversation, the character selection screen appeared on both of their monitors.
“Hyung, which character are you going to pick?”
“I’ll…”
Just as Mo Yeon-hu was about to answer, Kwon Mi-eon glanced at his screen and let out a short laugh.
“Ah, a Necromancer?”
Habits die hard; the mouse cursor had already drifted over to the Necromancer!
“Necromancers are great. What a fantastic character. You know, I actually like Necromancers the best.”
…But seeing that smiling face, he knew he couldn’t go through with it.
“When I see a Necromancer, it sometimes reminds me of a certain person. For example…”
“Ah, it was a mistake. Now that I think about it, the Necromancer isn’t that great. I’ll take this one. Wow! This one looks cool. Ugh, who plays a character that looks so gloomy these days? Right?”
Terrified, Mo Yeon-hu quickly selected a random character. Kwon Mi-eon turned his head forward and gave a slight shudder.
“Ah, yes. Sure.”
He pretended to be calm, but anyone could see he was suppressing a laugh, which naturally made Mo Yeon-hu look miserable.
‘He’s doing this on purpose!’
Kwon Mi-eon was infuriating, pretending not to know while teasing him and laughing secretly. It was annoying. But what could he do? While he struggled to suppress his sorrow, Kwon Mi-eon composed his expression and leaned in slightly.
“But are you really going to play that one?”
Looking closely at the screen, the character he had chosen was floating there.
Arbiter
“They covered their own eyes to face the truth.”
Personal emotions only cloud the vision. Weigh the world with a sharply honed reason! An executor of the battlefield who becomes a merciless blade of judgment for the wicked, and a holy sanctuary of salvation for the forsaken!
A character with a holy aura, holding a scale and wearing a blindfold, it was a versatile class capable of performing both dealer and supporter roles simultaneously.
“Uh, well… it’s cool. It has a scale, and it’s a female character, so she’s pretty. The veil gives it a nice atmosphere…”
“You must have been quite impressed by the Arbiter.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I mean, the character stands out, right…?”
In truth, he had just clicked whatever was there to avoid the Necromancer, but perhaps the image of YouGonnaSue playing this character brilliantly had been etched into his mind.
However, Kwon Mi-eon’s expression grew worse the more he answered. Feeling as though the other was slightly piqued, Mo Yeon-hu wondered if it was just his imagination until the next words came out.
“Why aren’t you playing a Sniper?”
“Sniper?”
“Yes, Snipers are cool too.”
Me? A Sniper?
Just the thought of playing such a difficult character made Mo Yeon-hu’s pupils tremble.
‘Wait… is he testing me? Is he trying to see my reaction so he can tease me again or use it as evidence?’
He suddenly remembered that Sniper was Miu’s class.
‘I can’t let that happen.’
Mo Yeon-hu quickly composed his face and nodded.
“I, uh, I really don’t know what kind of character a Sniper is. I really don’t, but… I just don’t think it’s my style.”
“Ah. It’s not your style, Hyung?”
“Yeah, I think I prefer the Arbiter!”
Mo Yeon-hu’s desperate struggle for survival began.
“I don’t know much about Snipers, but just the name sounds scary, whereas the Arbiter sounds reliable just by the name, right? The scale is cool, the character is pretty…”
“Wow. You’re very specific. You must be very interested in the Arbiter.”
“Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it just caught my eye…”
“Hyung, but.”
Kwon Mi-eon smiled faintly.
“We’re talking about characters right now, right?”
Only the mouth.
Everything except the mouth—the tone and the gaze—was so fierce that Mo Yeon-hu flinched for a moment, overwhelmed by the pressure. However, he soon continued cautiously, as if he didn’t know why he was nervous.
“Of course we’re talking about characters… right?”
“Right, we should be talking about characters.”
For some reason, it felt like he would kill him if the answer were no.
‘Is the Arbiter that bad?’
Flustered by the sudden change in mood, Mo Yeon-hu shouted as if to change the subject.
“Then what character are you going to pick! Anyway…!”
The words he intended to snap—asking if he was obviously going to be a Sniper—stopped in his throat.
“I’m going to be an Arbiter.”
…What? Why an Arbiter? While Mo Yeon-hu wore a bewildered expression at the sudden statement, Kwon Mi-eon seemed serious, with a female character wearing a white veil on his screen.
“You’re… playing an Arbiter?”
It was believable that he would be shocked. Kwon Mi-eon was Miu, and Miu was Kwon Mi-eon. The role that suited him best was a dealer who could one-shot an opponent’s head from afar: the Sniper.
“Why, do you hate it?”
But Kwon Mi-eon’s reaction was strange. He sounded somewhat sulky.
“Does it annoy you just seeing me pick the Arbiter? Do you feel like I’m contaminating the character you like?”
…Huh?
“No, I never thought that…”
“No, you did think that, Hyung. You had a look on your face that said, ‘How could someone like you be an Arbiter?’”
What is wrong with this guy? He was like a child picking a fight and refusing to lose a single word.
“I just thought a much cooler and more difficult dealer character would suit you better…”
Mo Yeon-hu was sincere. It was hard to imagine a Kwon Mi-eon who wasn’t a Sniper.
“…”
Kwon Mi-eon said nothing in response to his honest answer. Mo Yeon-hu could only turn his head away awkwardly.
‘I should just pick my own character properly…’
Strangely, now that Kwon Mi-eon had picked it, Mo Yeon-hu lost interest in the Arbiter. He began scrolling through the character window to find another class, and because of that, he didn’t see it.
He didn’t see Kwon Mi-eon’s fingertips pressing down hard to suppress the corners of his mouth, which kept twitching upward while his eyes remained fixed on the screen.
‘Is there anything else?’
After reading through a few class descriptions, the Mechanic—which he had considered alongside the Necromancer when he first started Zombie Village—caught his eye.
Mechanic
“The world is most beautiful when it moves according to a perfect design!”
The groans of zombies and the screams of humans are nothing more than system noise. Now, it is time to overcome the limits between human and robot and become the ‘true master’ of the battlefield!
The sight of brutal heavy weaponry attached to the arm and gleaming caught his attention. In particular, the heavy muscles emphasized every time the character moved and the destructive presentation were appealing.
“I’ll go with Mechanic.”
“A Mechanic?”
“Yeah. The muscles are so cool.”
Unlike the frail physique of the Necromancer, he nodded with satisfaction while watching the combat scenes of the Mechanic, who roared and slaughtered zombies with bulging muscles. Kwon Mi-eon stared at him blankly for a moment, as if lost for words.
“The people who actually play Mechanic are really…”
Did Mo Yeon-hu know? In terms of user rankings, Necromancers were second to last, and Mechanics were the absolute last. The Mechanic class was so unpopular that people on the forums had moved past lying down and had become cold corpses; no posts were even being uploaded anymore.
“Never mind.”
Though surprised by Mo Yeon-hu’s taste, he couldn’t say anything more since Mo Yeon-hu liked it so much.
“Did you decide on your nickname?”
“Yes. What are you going to use, Hyung?”
Kwon Mi-eon had already entered the tutorial window. The Arbiter, wearing white priest robes and a blindfold, was beautiful.
‘Oh, he did a good job.’
Mo Yeon-hu had no interest in customizing and chose the default, but Kwon Mi-eon had sculpted his character quite delicately in that short time.
‘Come to think of it, he’s always been good at that kind of thing.’
Mo Yeon-hu suddenly recalled the smooth, bald head of his Necromancer. To be fair, he hadn’t been interested in whether game characters were handsome or pretty, and the situation back then had been what it was.
‘I wasn’t in a position to be picky.’
For someone who had never played a game like this before, customizing was far too difficult.
‘He looked more like a person later on, though.’
After he finally obtained the Necromancer hood, bangs seemed to appear as a default feature, allowing him to escape baldness.
‘I guess I grew attached. I keep thinking about it.’
As Mo Yeon-hu nostalgically recalled his bald Necromancer, he saw the scene of Kwon Mi-eon playing.
With a shimmering sound effect, the scale floated up, and he aimed a gun embedded with a cross. Then, a brilliant light exploded, filling the health of allies placed in the training ground and pouring out flashy buff effects.
“Are you really going to be a supporter?”
The Arbiter was a position that could be either a dealer or a supporter, but there wasn’t a single dealer skill in Kwon Mi-eon’s skill window.
“Yes. I’m going to be a support.”
Kwon Mi-eon as a healer. It felt a bit awkward, but seeing him play, it actually suited him quite well.
‘He’s like a Sniper who heals.’
When the Arbiter fires the gun, it is judged as healing for allies and an attack for enemies. The more accurately he hits allies, the more their health refills, and seeing how the allies’ health surged wherever Kwon Mi-eon shot…
‘It’s really Miu.’
Anyone could see that his aim was extraordinary. Anyone who knew Miu’s skill would have recognized him instantly.
‘What the… why does he look cool even as an Arbiter?’
While thinking that great aim shows even when playing a supporter, something strange caught Mo Yeon-hu’s eye.
Kwon Mi-eon had just zoomed out his view and switched to third-person, and his nickname became visible.
“You, your nickname is…!”
His voice flipped in horror, and his hands began to shake convulsively.
“What is it, Hyung?”
[NotMiYeong]
“Is there a problem?”
YOU SON OF A BITCH!!