“Aren’t you curious to hear me speak casually?”“Curious about what? All you have to do is drop the ‘yo’ at the end of your sentences and it’s basically casual speech.”“Honorifics and casual speech feel completely different in tone, though.”Even as he said that, Gang Jaegyung was still speaking in honorifics. I never asked him to switch, and even when I told him to do as he liked, he still clung to it like a man possessed. He insisted on asking permission just to visit my house in Dusk, and now it seemed like he even needed explicit approval to drop formal speech. Was this some sort of personality quirk?“Then go ahead, try it.”Since he clearly wanted to speak casually, I decided to humor him. The moment I gave the go-ahead, he opened his mouth with suspicious eagerness.“Yeong-ah.”…That was way too cringe.“Just say it normally.”“That was normal.”“No, like how close friends talk.”When I gave him the hint, Jaegyung paused to think for a second, then spoke again.“Yeong-aaaaaah.”Was he mocking me? But his expression and eyes were pure as could be, so I couldn’t even call him out on it.“You really don’t have any friends, huh.”“Why are you picking a fight out of nowhere?”“What you just said sounded like something you’d call a lover.”“What’s the difference, really?”“Don’t be ridiculous. What kind of guy calls another guy ‘Yeong-aaaaaah’ without a last name? You only do that when you’re hiding something.”He did say he was a loner in school… Maybe he really forgot how to talk to people.But maybe something clicked for him, because his next attempt came with newfound confidence.“Hey, Goyoung.”…He said it correctly, and yet it sounded like insubordination. His voice still carried that built-in passive ability—like it had a thousand scoops of sweetness, a thousand scoops of kindness, and a hundred scoops of freshness.“Why does that still sound so disrespectful…”“Why?”“I’d like to know that myself… But also, why are you still using honorifics?”“Oh. Right. Why?”…Yeah, seriously—why? How could a single word—“Why?”—come off as this smug?While I was busy untangling the mess in my own head, the loading screen disappeared and ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) the match began. There wasn’t much to do in the opening phase, so I focused on farming to level up and moving into position as I spoke to Jaegyung.“Say something else… I need to get used to it.”“Say what? I mean—what should I say?”“Anything.”“Mm. So Yeong, you’re going mid with Orlabia, right?”“Yeah, probably.”“Should I come help you zone?”There it was again—that same nagging feeling that he sounded arrogant. Coming mid as a support was just common sense, and he was asking so kindly in such a sweet tone… and yet it rubbed me the wrong way.“Uh… no. I’m good. Just watch left lane for me.”“But there’s a higher chance you’ll run into the enemy in mid. Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to help you?”…He sounded genuinely concerned, and that only made me feel even more awkward. In the end, I gave up on this whole “hear him speak casually” experiment. He was the one begging to do it—I didn’t care either way.I sighed and moved my character, then said:“Just forget it. Don’t speak casually.”“Huh? Why… why not? Was it that bad?”“I think speaking formally is your identity. You’re the kind of guy who should use honorifics with friends too.”Gang Jaegyung speaking casually was just… wrong. It triggered some kind of cognitive dissonance. When he talked that way, he stopped feeling like Gang Jaegyung. It was like a total stranger suddenly getting chummy with me out of nowhere. That had to be it—there was no other explanation.When I finished speaking and glanced sideways, I saw Jaegyung slouched, visibly deflated. His shoulders drooped and, for a moment, it felt like I could see dog ears droop over his head.After the brief “casual speech event” ended, we got to work in our respective roles and the game began.MOBA games—sometimes called AOS—were a chaotic blend of genres like RPGs, FPSs, and RTSs. The goal was to level up, collect gold, and grow stronger within a fixed time limit so your team could invade and destroy the enemy base. That required good coordination and strategy.Among them, Lastones emphasized the RPG party system more than other MOBAs.Most MOBA maps were split into three paths, called lanes, and each lane had structures called towers. These towers dealt heavy damage or debuffs, keeping enemies at bay, so it was crucial to destroy enemy towers while defending your own. Even if you broke all their towers, if they destroyed yours first, you still lost.So the early game was always a tense standoff—teams sizing each other up, each player or duo guarding a lane, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. But in Lastones, unlike other MOBAs, it became standard strategy to abandon one lane entirely and move as a 2- or 3-person party.The first reason for this was the existence of a monster called the Hooum, which gave gold and experience but was incredibly tanky and dangerous. Soloing it often led to death.But you had to kill it to level up and earn money, so tanks would soak its attacks while damage dealers chipped away at it, making it standard to see one tank and one DPS moving together.So what did the support do? Well, when a tank was too low on health, or a DPS was underperforming, or they needed vision to prevent enemy ambushes, the support would shuttle between the two parties rather than staying in one lane.Now, with only two lanes being guarded by two-man teams, you might wonder: wouldn’t that leave one lane completely open and allow the enemy to break through?That leads to Lastones’ second standard tactic: since you can’t destroy the enemy base without taking out all the enemy towers in that lane first, people just focused on two lanes for safety and growth. That’s how the “abandon one lane” meta was born.With three lanes, and both sides defending only two, they were bound to run into each other—and more often than not, that encounter happened mid. Since Orlabia was a character with a strong early game, she came with me to the center lane. Jaegyung, true to his word, didn’t follow mid—he started moving left.…Then turned around and came back to mid.“What the hell? I told you to go left.”“Well, just in case, you know?”He said it with a sheepish grin. This guy… did he not trust me or something?“I don’t need you. Go.”“Bet they don’t need me either.”“They don’t have a tank like me. Go help them.”“You don’t have a support like me.”“I am a tank. That means someone needs to cover the lane with neither.”After coaxing him into going—mainly to tank for our DPS so they could kill the Hooum—he finally gave in and took a side route to the left lane, grumbling under his breath. He of all people should know this is the most efficient setup. So why the hell was he being stubborn?We fed the Hooum to our DPS, shared the XP to level up, and I bought an item with the little gold I got. It lowered my damage output but boosted HP and defense. It also reduced a stat called Bleed Rate.In Lastones, there were no potions to restore HP. Instead, the game used two unique stats: Vamp Rate and Bleed Rate. Because all the characters in Lastones were vampires.The higher your Vamp Rate, the more HP you recovered proportional to the damage you dealt. The lower your Bleed Rate, the less blood an enemy could siphon from you—even if their Vamp Rate was high. So, as a tank, I needed items that would reduce my Bleed Rate and increase my survivability, even if that meant sacrificing some attack power.After we killed the Hooum and crept up toward the enemy’s tower, we finally ran into the other team. The surprise? It wasn’t a tank and DPS—it was a DPS and a support.

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