Shounen [Webtoon] DICE by Yunhyunseok

[strixflash]

The girl is annoying though. I hate characters like her...

 

[shaheer]

The girl is annoying though. I hate characters like her...

well i dont like her much either nd she as a character is not the focus of the story though its rather her presence is important for the guy. It seems there is a bit back story to her given the scar prolly domestic abuse or sth will be interesting hopefully but now i am more interested in the hero

 

[Son-Derling]

i really like this manhwa
would love for it to have more regular updates

 

[kendama]

Hi, I'm new to this forum. As they say in Japanese, please take care of me.

DICE is one of my favourite East Asian comic series and I love talking about it. However, because in more popular forums like Batoto discussion tends to become quite acrimonious and I can get quite confrontational too, I've decided to choose Mangahelpers to engage in a more quiet, subdued exchange of ideas. I just cannot help writing about things I like, even if no one will read or comment. At least I can check back later on what I wrote and see how my thoughts on the matter evolved.

So, I'm going to write a long-ish text now, under spoiler tags, on my thoughts about the most recent chapters and where I think this series is going.

For starters: I have extremely positive views of Eunju, have written about them elsewhere, and am not going to change my mind about them unless the series begins to show her in a different light (or someone brings up a very cogent argument that makes me see her negatively - I know most of the common indictments of her and have rebuttals for them, but am not willing to discuss the matter much further), so if you don't like her, this text may not be of interest to you.

Spoiler

So, Eunju came out of chapters 36-38 in a much better (moral) shape than I expected, and so did Dongtae and Taebin.

I was afraid that the author would make her turn against Dongtae when it became apparent to her that he had been protecting her just because of X's special quest. Although that would have been understandable, given the smoking gun evidence, I'd have been annoyed if she had brushed aside all the past weeks when Dongtae had shown her nothing other than kindness and had not seen any merit in his desperate efforts to save her.

The author seems to have decided not to dwell on this problem by having Dongtae save Eunju again after having received his reward, which must have confirmed his intentions as genuine to her.

The trade-off, unfortunately for Dongtae, is for him to distance himself from Eunju by becoming a guild leader. However, he seems fully prepared to do it - it is sad, but this kind of forced distance is a staple of this kind of series - but the upside is that not only Taebin, but Eunju herself seems to understand what he is doing. Of course, her awareness, right now, is just my interpretation of the way they were shown interacting in the aftermath of the events at the rooftop, and on her expression when Dongtae arrived in class the next day. I hope it is confirmed later.

Now, some people, including myself, seem to agree that Eunju is an elaborate plot device who serves as the moral cornerstone of the series. Through her contempt and suspicion of dice, she is protrayed as X's chief antagonist, the one person he cannot corrupt. Until chapter 37, she was the only one to point out - and to make Dongtae aware of it - that the quests are not innocent and that, while one should work hard to improve oneself, this must not happen at the expense of other people.

However, Dongtae is not convinced. After all, his life has generally improved after becoming a dicer. He doesn't realise that this is only because his love for Eunju made him decide early on not to accept quests that involve manipulating or hurting other people (chapters 7-9). What sets him apart from other dicers (so far) is that he "took responsibility for himself", to use the words he chose to make the second rule for the guild. In that he has a stronger personal ethics than Taebin, who was perfectly willing to do whatever X asked until he got truly in love with Eunju and decided to protect her. (Well, it is also possible that he was more interested in preventing the appearance of other A rankers, but I don't think he would have put himself at such a risk if that had been his only motivation.)

So, by that reading, Dongtae seems to have been established as a different approach to dice than Taebin's (complete embracing of Dicership, consequences to others be damned) and Eunju's (absolute refusal). He wants to have dice, improve himself AND retain his morals in the process. And by forming the guild, he wants to show other people the way to do the same.

It's a bit like gun ownership. It can be benign, if you train yourself and live up to your responsibilities, or belong to a group that uses guns in a restricted environment or regulatory framework, like a marksmanship club or a security force.

I guess some readers may expect, by this reading, that the rest of the series will be dedicated to showing how Dongtae will pull this off and show Eunju that her approach is backwards, and that humans can shoulder the responsibility that comes with great power. That would make him the new moral beacon of the series, replacing her.

Unfortunately (for some, not for me), I don't think that's how things are going to play out.

The problem of gun ownership as a comparison is that guns are not inherently biased: they are not good or evil, and one can use them to do good or bad things. Not so with dice.

What Eunju realised from the beginning, but Dongtae seems to be only faintly aware of, is that the problem are not the dice. The problem is X. This series is set around the theme of the Faustian bargain: "I'll give you what you want, if your soul becomes mine afterwards."

Dongtae wants to have his cake and eat it, but it is impossible ultimately: X controls the game and the tasks he dispenses are always charged with malice. Even Dongtae's innocent pranks may have dire consequences: after all, the fateful bullying incident of Byungchul, which unleashed the chain reaction that caused the recent crisis, only happened because Dongtae had been asked by X to steal his mathematics answer sheets.

X is acutely aware that if he gets enough people to do enough quests, no matter how seemingly innocent they are, things will go out of hand sooner rather than later, and he will be able to enjoy his horror show eventually. That is why the analogy with Stephen King's Needful things is so apt.

The author is very good at making it seem this is not the case. He always carefully depicts Dongtae as a well-intentioned person who daydreams of using his powers to protect the weak (and Eunju). And he has also done three things that point readers towards the "dice as amoral entities" direction:

i. He makes Taebin tell Dongtae that he understands his motivations and sees him eye to eye.

ii. He makes most of the students accept Dongtae's proposal willingly and for a moment, everyone seems to have reverted to their original condition of normal, happy-go-lucky high school students who are not obsessed with dice. That is very clever, in the end of chapter 38 the class looks "normal" again. The only dissenters are people we are taught to hate by the author: the Family No-eyes Boss, a pathetic weakling if there ever was one; and the three Dicer hags from next room, who will need to get a Dice skill to reincarnate sooner as aquarium barnacles if they are ever to become likeable.

iii. And - in a quite brilliant move - the author offers Dongtae a reward for his efforts, by having the short-haired girl, revealed as a wide-eyed, mischievous beauty with a wonderful smile, approach Dongtae with clear intentions. A compensation for having lost Eunju, so to say. A real-life, true opportunity for love as opposed to the Platonic, one-sided infatuation that Eunju represented.

I wouldn't be exactly annoyed if the series went this way, and the author can pull it off if he solves a few outstanding issues. However, I think we have far too much evidence in the currently published chapters that this will NOT be the case. Let's address what this evidence is in light of the three items above.

Item (i) is far too ambiguous right now. True, Taebin seems to understand Dongtae's plan, but he hasn't said he believes it will work, just that he thinks the principle of the plan is good. In my view, his last exchange with Dongtae points towards a more sceptical stance on Taebin's part. If I were to guess his thoughts on the matter, they would be something like "Well, I've never seen my former dicer rivals attempt this. The idea is worth a shot, but I will reserve judgement until I see it in practice."

Item (ii) can be pure smoke and mirrors on the author's part. It looks just like a Potemkin village, something the author made to put us on the wrong track, only to destroy all this superficial happiness later. Indeed, whenever things become too rosy too quickly, and there seems to be an attempt to brush the past aside, I become suspicious.

Item (iii), as I said, is the most well done. The girl seems sent from heaven (or X) to Dongtae. She is beautiful, a Dicer, and someone who uses her brain and makes a moral decision (kicking No-eyes down the stairs) when the most profitable course of action seemed to be to let go of morals and pounce at Eunju's throat. She seems someone who could be Dongtae's partner in using dice to accomplish good. There is a theory that she was the bespectacled girl seen every now and then and who bumped into Dongtae in chapter seven. So she is possibly someone who used dice to get out of an spiral of despair like Dongtae and thus has a moral education that makes her responsible enough to use dice and not lose herself.

My only problem with her is that she uses her brain a little too much. The author is subtle, but she is definitely the girl who had been distributing dice left, right and centre and more importantly, she seems to be the one who bribed the dicer wannabe who accosted Eunju in the music room to extract his story. So she is definitely NOT using dice only to improve herself. She has an agenda - which probably involves getting closer to Dongtae and making him hers -, but she doesn't seem to care very much about the consequences of giving dice to whomever.

So, while I don't think she is evil, I believe she is the kind of person who embraced Dicership too willingly, too fast, and while she may be moral for a while, she is definitely not above manipulating other people. In other words, she is easy prey for X, even if she is cleverer than the average dicer. Her entrance seems the perfect flip-side to Eunju's departure from Dongtae's life, but she may be also her moral flip-side. And that is a red alert for me.

In summary, the author is setting the stage for a major disillusionment later, with Dongtae's as the main actor. Dongtae will taste happiness for a while, but in the end, X will dash his plans for a happy future as a dicer.

In philosophy, if the premise is false, the whole argument collapses as a house of cards. In my opinion, DICE is all about showing that if you use something that is morally corrupted from the outset, no matter how upright you are, something bad will happen. Dongtae, I believe, will play the part of the tragic hero whose hopes are repeatedly destroyed until he realises... that the answer was right next to him from the beginning.

In Eunju.

Don't follow the orders of someone who wants to harm other people.

 

[shaheer]

Hi, I'm new to this forum. As they say in Japanese, please take care of me.

DICE is one of my favourite East Asian comic series and I love talking about it. However, because in more popular forums like Batoto discussion tends to become quite acrimonious and I can get quite confrontational too, I've decided to choose Mangahelpers to engage in a more quiet, subdued exchange of ideas. I just cannot help writing about things I like, even if no one will read or comment. At least I can check back later on what I wrote and see how my thoughts on the matter evolved.

So, I'm going to write a long-ish text now, under spoiler tags, on my thoughts about the most recent chapters and where I think this series is going.

For starters: I have extremely positive views of Eunju, have written about them elsewhere, and am not going to change my mind about them unless the series begins to show her in a different light (or someone brings up a very cogent argument that makes me see her negatively - I know most of the common indictements of her and have rebuttals for them, but am not willing to discuss the matter much further), so if you don't like her, this text may not be of interest to you.

Spoiler

So, Eunju came out of chapters 36-38 in a much better (moral) shape than I expected, and so did Dongtae and Taebin.

I was afraid that the author would make her turn against Dongtae when it became apparent to her that he had been protecting her just because of X's special quest. Although that would have been understandable, given the smoking gun evidence, I'd have been annoyed if she had brushed aside all the past weeks when Dongtae had shown her nothing other than kindness and had not seen any merit in his desperate efforts to save her.

The author seems to have decided not to dwell on this problem by having Dongtae save Eunju again after having received his reward, which must have confirmed his intentions as genuine to her.

The trade-off, unfortunately for Dongtae, is for him to distance himself from Eunju by becoming a guild leader. However, he seems fully prepared to do it - it is sad, but this kind of forced distance is a staple of this kind of series - but the upside is that not only Taebin, but Eunju herself seems to understand what he is doing. Of course, her awareness, right now, is just my interpretation of the way they were shown interacting in the aftermath of the events at the rooftop, and on her expression when Dongtae arrived in class the next day. I hope it is confirmed later.

Now, some people, including myself, seem to agree that Eunju is an elaborate plot device who serves as the moral cornerstone of the series. Through her contempt and suspicion of dice, she is protrayed as X's chief antagonist, the one person he cannot corrupt. Until chapter 37, she was the only one to point out - and to make Dongtae aware of it - that the quests are not innocent and that, while one should work hard to improve oneself, this must not happen at the expense of other people.

However, Dongtae is not convinced. After all, his life has generally improved after becoming a dicer. He doesn't realise that this is only because his love for Eunju made him decide early on not to accept quests that involve manipulating or hurting other people (chapters 7-9). What sets him apart from other dicers (so far) is that he "took responsibility for himself", to use the words he chose to make the second rule for the guild. In that he has a stronger personal ethics than Taebin, who was perfectly willing to do whatever X asked until he got truly in love with Eunju and decided to protect her. (Well, it is also possible that he was more interested in preventing the appearance of other A rankers, but I don't think he would have put himself at such a risk if that had been his only motivation.)

So, by that reading, Dongtae seems to have been established as a different approach to dice than Taebin's (complete embracing of Dicership, consequences to others be damned) and Eunju's (absolute refusal). He wants to have dice, improve himself AND retain his morals in the process. And by forming the guild, he wants to show other people the way to do the same.

It's a bit like gun ownership. It can be benign, if you train yourself and live up to your responsibilities, or belong to a group that uses guns in a restricted environment or regulatory framework, like a marksmanship club or a security force.

I guess some readers may expect, by this reading, that the rest of the series will be dedicated to showing how Dongtae will pull this off and show Eunju that her approach is backwards, and that humans can shoulder the responsibility that comes with great power. That would make him the new moral beacon of the series, replacing her.

Unfortunately (for some, not for me), I don't that's how things are going to play out.

The problem of gun ownership as a comparison is that guns are not inherently biased: they are not good or evil, and one can use them to do good or bad things. Not so with dice.

What Eunju realised from the beginning, but Dongtae seems to be only faintly aware, is that the problem are not the dice. The problem is X. This series is set around the theme of the Faustian bargain: "I'll give you what you want, if your soul becomes mine afterwards."

Dongtae wants to have his cake and eat it, but it is impossible ultimately: X controls the game and the tasks he dispenses are always charged with malice. Even Dongtae's innocent pranks may have dire consequences: after all, the fateful bullying incident of Byungchul, which unleashed the chain reaction that caused the recent crisis, only happened because Dongtae had been asked by X to steal his mathematics answer sheets.

X is acutely aware that if he gets enough people to do enough quests, no matter how seemingly innocent they are, things will go out of hand sooner rather than later, and he will be able to enjoy his horror show eventually. That is why the analogy with Stephen King's Needful things is so apt.

The author is very good at making it seems this is not the case. He always carefully depicts Dongtae as a well-intentioned person who daydreams of using his powers to protect the weak (and Eunju). And he has also done three things that point readers towards the "dice as amoral entities" direction:

i. He makes Taebin tell Dongtae that he understands his motivations and sees him eye to eye.

ii. He makes most of the students accept Dongtae's proposal willingly and for a moment, everyone seems to have reverted to their original condition of normal, happy-go-lucky high school students who are not obsessed with dice. That is very clever, in the end of chapter 38 the class looks "normal" again. The only dissenters are people we are taught to hate by the author: the Family No-eyes Boss, a pathetic weakling if there ever was one; and the three Dicer hags from next room, who will need to get a Dice skill to reincarnate sooner as aquarium barnacles if they are ever to become likeable.

iii. And - in a quite brilliant move - the author offers Dongtae a reward for his efforts, by having the short-haired girl, revealed as a wide-eyed, mischievous beauty with a wonderful smile, approach Dongtae with clear intentions. A compensation for having lost Eunju, so to say. A real-life, true opportunity for love as opposed to the Platonic, one-sided infatuation that Eunju represented.

I wouldn't be exactly annoyed if the series went this way, and the author can pull it off if he solves a few outstanding issues. However, I think we have far too much evidence in the currently published chapters that this will NOT be the case. Let's address what this evidence is in light of the three items above.

Item (i) is far too ambiguous right now. True, Taebin seems to understand Dongtae's plan, but he hasn't said he believes it will work, just that he thinks the principle of the plan is good. In my view, his last exchange with Dongtae points towards a more sceptical stance on Taebin's part. If I were to guess his thoughts on the matter, they would be something like "Well, I've never seen my former dicer rivals attempt this. The idea is worth a shot, but I will reserve judgement until I see it in practice."

Item (ii) can be pure smoke and mirrors on the author's part. It looks just like a Potemkin village, something the author made to put us on the wrong track, only to destroy all this superficial happiness later. Indeed, whenever things become too rosy too quickly, and there seems to be an attempt to brush the past aside, I become suspicious.

Item (iii), as I said, is the most well done. The girl seems sent from heaven (or X) to Dongtae. She is beautiful, a Dicer, and someone who uses her brain and makes a moral decision (kicking No-eyes down the stairs) when the most profitable course of action seemed to be to let go of morals and pounce at Eunju's throat. She seems someone who could be Dongtae's partner in using dice to accomplish good. There is a theory that she was the bespectacled girl seen every now and then and who bumped into Dongtae in chapter seven. So she is possibly someone who used dice to get out of an spiral of despair like Dongtae and thus has a moral education that makes her responsible enough to use dice and not lose herself.

My only problem with her is that she uses her brain a little too much. The author is subtle, but she is definitely the girl who had been distributing dice left, right and centre and more importantly, she seems to be the one who bribed the dicer wannabe who accosted Eunju in the music room to extract his story. So she is definitely NOT using dice only to improve herself. She has an agenda - which probably involves getting closer to Dongtae and making him hers -, but she doesn't seem to care very much about the consequences of giving dice to whomever.

So, while I don't think she is evil, I believe she is the kind of person who embraced Dicership too willingly, too fast, and while she may be moral for a while, she is definitely not above manipulating other people. In other words, she is easy prey for X, even if she is cleverer than the average dicer. Her entrance seems the perfect flip-side to Eunju's departure from Dongtae's life, but she may be also her moral flip-side. And that is a red alert for me.

In summary, the author is setting the stage for a major disillusionment later, with Dongtae's as the main actor. Dongtae will taste happiness for a while, but in the end, X will dash his plans for a happy future as a dicer.

In philosophy, if the premise is false, the whole argument collapses as a house of cards. In my opinion, DICE is all about showing that if you use something that is morally corrupted from the outset, no matter how upright you are, something bad will happen. Dongtae, I believe, will play the part of the tragic hero whose hopes are repeatedly destroyed until he realises... that the answer was right next to him from the beginning.

In Eunju.

Don't follow the orders of someone who wants to harm other people.

Dude are you English literature student? Ne way welcome aboard Dice discussing is slower than some other toons like TOG or Noblesse or at present Gamer.

 

[kendama]

Thanks, shaheer, I'll be sure to drop by every now and then.

I promise I'm not going to write a wall of text whenever a new chapter is out, but the reason I love this series is that it is great food for thought. The plot is simple, the theme is ages-old, but the author is very good at developing the idea.

I read ToG and The Gamer. I have just a little interest in the former, and I really like the latter, but DICE is by far my favourite. I am very fond of stories that deal with moral dilemmas, and this one is a prime example. The main characters, Dongtae, Taebin, X and Eunju, are very well designed and fulfill their purposes wonderfully.

I don't know who is going to prevail in the end: X, Dongtae or Eunju. X is unlikely - amoral villains don't stand much chance these days. But right now the author can go either way regarding the other two: he may take an optimistic view of human nature and have Dongtae point the way towards a world of enhanced humans where X is no longer there to manipulate people; or he can choose a pessimistic (realistic?) resolution in which Dongtae is finally proven wrong and has to be rescued (figuratively) by Eunju. Because I think the Byungchul, Pandora and Long Day arcs point towards the latter, and I am particularly sceptical of Dongtae's plan, I stick with Eunju.

 

[shaheer]

Thanks, shaheer, I'll be sure to drop by every now and then.

I promise I'm not going to write a wall of text whenever a new chapter is out, but the reason I love this series is that it is great food for thought. The plot is simple, the theme is ages-old, but the author is very good at developing the idea.

I read ToG and The Gamer. I have just a little interest in the former, and I really like the latter, but DICE is by far my favourite. I am very fond of stories that deal with moral dilemmas, and this one is a prime example. The main characters, Dongtae, Taebin, X and Eunju, are very well designed and fulfill their purposes wonderfully.

I don't know who is going to prevail in the end: X, Dongtae or Eunju. X is unlikely - amoral villains don't stand much chance these days. But right now the author can go either way regarding the other two: he may take an optimistic view of human nature and have Dongtae point the way towards a world of enhanced humans where X is no longer there to manipulate people; or he can choose a pessimistic (realistic?) resolution in which Dongtae is finally proven wrong and has to be rescued (figuratively) by Eunju. Because I think the Byungchul, Pandora and Long Day arcs point towards the latter, and I am particularly sceptical of Dongtae's plan, I stick with Eunju.

I like the main chara but i dont share your appreciation for the girl though. Dont like the personality, I like the Dongtae and the other chara who is on the top tier of the Dicers. The plot is indeed unique in some sense and its a decent read.
As for your post length dont worry you should speak your hearts out

 

[kendama]

Actually, what I like about Eunju is strictly her role as a plot device. I can understand if people think her "too perfect" to the point of being annoying: I guess the author wanted to make her a total and complete foil to X and thus she is a little unrealistic. The same accusation has been levelled against Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy, but just as here, she is essential for the plot and the protagonist's main motivation. So I guess characters like Eunju come from a long tradition, including Gretchen in Goethe's Faust.

What I can't stand is the opinion held at some quarters that she is a vain, superficial girl or worse, a hypocrite. However, I've wasted my fingerprints arguing the matter elsewhere, have given up and don't want to convince anyone. I've actually run away from another forum because the discussion around Eunju was getting vicious and the arguments, circular. So if I meet anyone who levels this kind of accusation against her again, I'll just ignore it and let everyone have their opinion.

 

[shaheer]

Actually, what I like about Eunju is strictly her role as a plot device. I can understand if people think her "too perfect" to the point of being annoying: I guess the author wanted to make her a total and complete foil to X and thus she is a little unrealistic. The same accusation has been levelled against Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy, but just as here, she is essential for the plot and the protagonist's main motivation. So I guess characters like Eunju come from a long tradition, including Gretchen in Goethe's Faust.

What I can't stand is the opinion held at some quarters that she is a vain, superficial girl or worse, a hypocrite. However, I've wasted my fingerprints arguing the matter elsewhere, have given up and don't want to convince anyone. I've actually run away from another forum because the discussion around Eunju was getting vicious and the arguments, circular. So if I meet anyone who levels this kind of accusation against her again, I'll just ignore it and let everyone have their opinion.

Well every one is entitled to their opinion we are not opening a cult you dont have to convince any one and you dont have to share their opinion if they dont share yours. Ne way when is the next chapter coming out?

 

[kendama]

(Previous comment deleted to highlight the new one)

Nice development on chapter 39. Long text under spoiler tags:

Spoiler

I suppose that, in addition to people who think that Eunju is hypocritical and shallow, there will be people who think she is self-righteous and stubborn.

After all, if the dice are of no interest to her, and she is suffering because the others crave them, why not just get rid of them? Even if she wasn't guilty of anything before, it is reasonable to believe that now she is contributing to her own suffering by clinging to the dice.

I've been musing about that.

First, even if she gave dice to someone else, the rumour that "she has dice" wouldn't vanish. There would always be people who would think she still has dice left and the bullying wouldn't stop. That's because gossip feeds rumour, and gossip doesn't die out easily.

But let's suppose that getting rid of the dice would do the trick.

How would she do it?

i. The dice are indestructible, so breaking them is no solution.

ii. Throwing them out the window is tantamount to rolling them, so she would become a dicer.

iii. Giving them to someone who doesn't know about them poses a moral dilemma. Eunju believes the dice are pernicious (and who can blame her?), so giving them out to an unsuspecting person is akin to giving that person a bomb, or poison, or an illness.

iv. Burying them somewhere would solve nothing, as no one would know she has done it. The bullying wouldn't stop.

v. Leaving them on a table in a public area where everyone can see them is a variation of (iii), only she wouldn't know who eventually got the dice.

vi. Giving them to someone who wants to be a dicer is a curious variation of (iii). It boils down to whether one believes that helping a person to do something detrimental to themselves is immoral or not. Philosophically, the question is undecided, but some people believe that whether the other person is willing is irrelevant, as their own conscience is the thing that concerns them. In other words, it may be that Eunju wouldn't be able to assist anyone, willing or not, to do themselves harm. It is a reasonable position adopted by many people in real life.

That leaves giving the dice to someone who is already a dicer as the only viable option. But it IS a solution. If she walks up to Dongtae in the middle of the crowded classroom, shoves the dice into his hands and announces that these are all the dice in her possession, there is a good chance that most people would be convinced and the persecution would stop.

So why doesn't she do it?

One possibility is that she is still tempted by the dice. She was initially interested (in "changing others"), so she may be in a personal struggle against temptation. She is not perfect, after all, far from it.

Another possibility is that she doesn't know that well how dice operate. So she may be unaware that quests are given prior to obtaining dice, and that simply giving a dicer the ones in her possession won't necessarily invite the recipient to go on a quest that might do other people harm.

There is also the fact that the only person she knows to be a dicer for sure is Dongtae, so she can't be absolutely certain that she won't be violating (iii) or (vi) - the recipient may be lying, after all. Yet, nothing stops her from giving her dice to Dongtae.

And yet another point to be made is that just because a person is on drugs, that is no reason to give them more dope.

I must say, having dice and not embracing them must be quite the heavy burden. I would be afraid of just dropping them accidentally if it were I.

Still, I am curious as to why she clings to them. Maybe she has a penchant for martyrdom - she wants to prove a point. I don't know. But it is certainly interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if she were the person X is the most interested in, and it is quite frightening to think that he could increase the pressure on her at any moment, just by sending her more dice and letting everyone know. Or he could send her a question mark die - if that happened, even Dongtae's guild members wouldn't be able to resist the temptation.

In an unrelated matter, she has started to blame Dongtae personally for her predicament. Or rather, I'd say her behaviour is more consistent with a moral condemnation of him. To Eunju, the suffering of people who don't have dice in the hands of those who have or want them is becoming painfully obvious, and it must be disappointing that a person she considered a friend simply doesn't get it and insists in trying to fix the unfixable.

Some might point out that her disappointment at Dongtae's inability to perceive her suffering is the mirror opposite of her behaviour towards him when he was the classroom loser. I'd answer that the situations are different: Dongtae did his best to hide his condition from Eunju, and that condition wasn't a consequence of any of Eunju's actions. Yet, it is true that, just as Dongtae did, she doesn't want to let anyone know of her problems, save for Taebin, probably.

I expect that this situation will be solved either tragically - something serious will happen and Eunju will be beyond hope of recovery - or Dongtae will finally realise that dice (or rather, the ways they are obtained) are no good. I think this series leans towards the former, but I hope to be wrong.

Well, I suppose it is also possible that she really didn't see Dongtae, she was just absorbed in thoughts about what had happened to her.

Now, the main development: Ahn Yeo Dwe. Bespectacled plump girl equals wide-eyed beauty. Not that anyone was surprised among the readers, but I am happy to see that my reasons to be suspicious of her were allayed, if not dispelled, by this chapter: she remains moral, and seems determined to keep Eunju and other innocent people out of harm's way. Next to Yeo Dwe, Eunju's spiral of despair seems foolish and pointless. The new girl seems the embodiment of the idea that dice can be used in virtuous ways. In other words, she might really be the perfect girl for Dongtae.

Still, I am curious as to what exactly she was doing while improving herself and why she got so many quests. There seems to be a vague awareness among dicers that quests are dispensed unequally by X. If I were to guess, X gauges how acommodating a person is to quests and uses that information to guide his decisions of whom he is going to help getting more dice. In that sense, I'd say that newbie dicer who guessed Yeo Dwe "must have put her life on the line" may have got only half of the story: maybe she put someone else's life on the line, too.

For now, I'll reserve judgement on Yeo Dwe until I know more. There is a reason why this chapter was called "The Light and The Shadow", after all. Titles are relevant, and I'd say there are two possible interpretations.

a. The "Light" are Dongtae and all the other dicers who want to retain their personal ethics, improve themselves and use that to accomplish good and enjoy happiness. Whereas the "Shadow" are the dicers or wannabes who are happy to do whatever they can - consequences to others be damned - to improve their appearance and skills.

b. The Light and Shadow are Eunju and Yeo Dwe. Who is which is up to us to find out.

For now, what I am the most curious about is Taebin. What he is doing, where he is, what his plans are and what happened to him in the past. Regarding the latter question, it seems obvious that something horrible happened when lots of people around him became dicers and A rankers, and Taebin ended up fleeing. So the author may either give us a flashback soon to show how different things will be with Dongtae in charge; or things will get horrible with Dongtae too and we will only then get a flashback to show us that the outcome had been exactly the same with Taebin, and that Dongtae was in a fool's errand from the very beginning. Personally, I expect the latter to happen.

Well, another wall of text. Can't wait for the next chapter!

 

[0Xellos]

Spoiler

Troll moment of the chapter: *girl ignores his greeting and walks past him* "Did she not see me?"

 

[Son-Derling]

well chapter 40-44 are out on naver...it is just the Edited Manga group not keeping up

 

[shaheer]

read the latest scannalated chaps. It seems the main character is getting serious about the dice thing he wants to create a group to save his crush, Frankly i like main who has dark sides and not all to goody goody like him.... would have liked if tanbein (or what ever his name is) would be the main

 

[kendama]

Another long text, even before a new chapter comes out! This is my longest yet, but I had a lot of free time today. Read at your own peril, knowing that it refers to how things stand at chapter 39:

Spoiler

You know, I wonder how much thought Dongtae has given to this guild structure. Let's revise his goals:

a. To control a majority of Dicers and wannabes that will ensure he can protect Eunju and others who don't want to have anything to do with Dice (if such people even exist, that is).

b. To point the way towards a moral Dicership, in which the user will be responsible for their actions and refuse quests that involve harming other people.

c. To prove to Eunju that Dicers are not any worse or better than normal people.

This may look simple at first sight, but actually it is a very tall order. We will find out what the author has in mind, but the guild is actually a microcosm of political theory.

I have thought about it and I'd say Dongtae must accomplish the following regarding the guild inner workings:

i. It must be advantageous to wannabes and weaker dicers: they must feel that being in the guild will give them access to more dice than they would get working solo. So, the guild must advance a degree of equality and protect its weaker links. In other words, solidarity.

ii. It must be advantageous to stronger, ambitious dicers: they must feel that even though they are powerful and clever enough to get a decent number of dicer on their own, they will still be fewer than if they add their resourcefulness to the guild. In other words, proportional reward to the stronger.

iii. It must prevent the disrupting behaviour of freeloaders: everyone must be perceived to contribute and no one must be rewarded without working hard to the best of their abilities. In other words, meritocracy.

iv. Differences in power must be attenuated, not accentuated over the long run. Weaker dicers must be more generously rewarded than stronger ones, but not so much that the stronger ones feel they are being sponged on. In other words, inflational growth of dice obtention: the guild must be able to secure so many dice that all "classes" will be satisfied.

v. Dongtae must somehow consolidate his leadership. Even if some of his companions eventually become A rankers as he promised to help them do, Dongtae's power edge must be overwhelming and unquestionable at all times, so that the moral rules he upholds will not be challenged, nor will his position as guild leader. So he must secure some sort of constant reward to himself for his assistance towards the weaker members that always gives him an edge, but not so much that the other members will resent him. He must be "paid" for his leadership in a way that is universally recognised as fair. In other words, he must be a Leviathan.

vi. He must be able to count on X's willingness to give the guild members tasks that are compatible with group work and attach proportional rewards to that.

vii. X's nasty influence - giving out noxious tasks - must be continuously mitigated by refusing those tasks. There must be a reward and punishment mechanism that addresses violations of Dongtae's rules.

viii. There must be mutual surveillance, so that guild members don't procure dice in personal quests - possibly harming other people - without the guild knowing, or activate dice for themselves without adding them to the guild's common pool or giving account of them. Remember, the dice materialise on the spot where the task was accomplished, and it is not a given that all the other members will be present when this happens. And X is unlikely to accomodate them and generate a common pool of collected dice, so the number of awarded dice can only be know by adding up the numbers of the individual members.

ix. The guild must look attractive to other dicers and wannabes so that they will enlist and thus fall under Dongtae's moral code. Or else, even if they don't join, they must fear the guild enough to be dissuaded from harming other people. So the guild's supremacy relative to nonparticipants must be secured and preserved just as Dongtae's relative to the guild. In other words, Dongtae must take a leaf out of Machiavelli's The Prince.

As you can see, the guild will NOT be a democracy. It is impossible, because there is no set of natural laws that members will be willing to follow: they must be cajoled and, if need be, coerced into accepting Dongtae's laws, which are not natural. They only have legitimacy as long as Dongtae's leadership is legitimate, that is, everyone agrees they are better off obeying him. Also, there will always be a hierarchy of power.

So what is Dongtae to do? If I were to guess, he would have to do something like this:

0. Agreeing on mutual disclosure

The simplest way would be for all members, in the beginning and end of a joint quest session, disclose how many dice they have by sharing their smartphones, so that the guild knows how many dice were gained and if someone committed foul play. Miscreants must be expelled.

1. Splitting the quests among groups

I find it unlikely that X will only give tasks that the whole guild - quite a few dozen of people from the looks of it - can do together. So Dongtae will have to list the current available quests and divide the members into parties to pursue them. He will have to devise clever ways of distributing them so that the reward dice will be also distributed evenly.

2. Rewarding merit and consoling failure

If a party accomplishes a quest, most of the dice must stay within the group and be split among the members, but a few must be paid to the common pool, and used to relieve parties who failed. But the failed parties must be disbanded next time so that a renewed failure invites recrimination and resentment over "paying taxes" to help people who "don't contribute". (I'm not saying this is how the world should be. This is a very specific group of people and as I said, not a democracy.) The members must be absorbed into other parties and new parties must form.

How parties are remade can be decided based on dice distribution, as I shall explain next.

3. A rule of reward dice distribution

Here lies the rub. Reward dice are awarded individually, but the members must be convinced to recognise external help from party colleagues and the guild, relinquish their claim and accept the rule of distribution. So Dongtae will have to balance reward, consolation, equality and meritocracy. And secure himself a steady supply that keeps him as leader.

How about this?

3.1. One dice from each party will be given to Dongtae, who will not get a share of the booty from the party in which he participated. But he will be able to choose to waive the pool award and get the booty share if he so wishes. Also, Dongtae must be barred from making more parties than there are quests (it would be nonsensical, anyway) to increase his quota.​

3.2. One dice from each party will be given to a common pool.​

3.2.1. Dice from the common pool will be given to parties that failed, on condition that they disband the next time. Wannabes from these parties will be awarded first, one per person so they can become dicers, and if there are leftovers, they will go to dicers that have the fewest number of dice so far, also one per person. If there are two or more people with identical dice stats disputing a smaller number of dice, there will be an arbitration mechanism in place (see below).​

3.3. Of the remaining dice of each successful party, if they are equal to or a multiple of the number of party members, they will be split equally among the members.​

3.4. If there are fewer remaining dice than there are members, they will be awarded first to wannabes in the group, and then to the weaker dicers as in 3.2.1. Again, there will be an arbitration mechanism to resolve conflicts among dicers with equal stats.​

3.5. If there are more remaining dice than there are party members, but the amount does not correspond to a multiple of the number of members, the extra dice will be distributed beginning from the strongest dicer in the party.The arbitration mechanism will also apply to solve ties and other conflicts.​

Comment: You get it, right? Rules 3.4. and 3.5. are mirror opposites so that stronger dicers will be sometimes rewarded, and sometimes the weaker ones and wannabes.

4. Remaking parties from one session to the next one

If you agree with me so far (supposing you are interested enough to have read up to here), there must be mechanisms in place to disband unsuccessful parties. So, as per 3.2.1, people who failed to secure dice won't be allowed to band together again next time.

However, I would advance the proposition that the most successful party (or parties) in a quest session should also be disbanded and its (their) members distributed among the other parties next time.

My main reasoning is that a group of people who are very successful will capitalise on their early advantage to increase it. And because dice create a virtuous cycle of becoming more powerful, having an advantage in the next dice quest, earning more dice, rinse and repeat, a clique would quickly appear of very strong dicers who work together all the time and become more and more distant of their guild colleagues.

I understand that disbanding strong parties may sound counterintuitive. After all, if the guild's goal is to optimise the rate of dice obtention, it should maximise performance and reward strong groups. The problem is that efficiency, while desirable, can also be too much of a good thing: not only would a clique of strong dicers form a caste, they also would eventually resent "paying tax" to help their weaker guild colleagues and start trying to subvert the guild rules in their favour, or even question Dongtae's leadership. So it is better to sacrifice "efficiency" that only benefits a few people in order to preserve "stability" of a relatively equitable system.

(If this sounds a lot like class conflict theory, it's because it is.)

Curiously enough, I don't think this rule would meet strong opposition, because chances are that the strongest part in a quest session would be the one Dongtae is participating in, and his companions would be unlikely to question his decision to disband, especially because in the beginning his superiority will be unquestionable. And later on, when the habit of disbanding becomes ingrained, everyone will follow it naturally.

This system would favour parties that are successful but not exceptional. The worst and best ones are disbanded and their members regroup. How would they do it?

Following the logic so far, members of the disbanded parties should regroup among themselves, weak alongside strong, so that the latter can help the former evolve. This may sound unfair for the strong members, but bear in mind that this unfairness would be at best temporary, because eventually all parties would be successful in their quests during a given session, and thus the problem of disbanding becomes much easier to solve.

My proposal is that when everyone is successful, only the best party disbands, but then the difference among parties would be small, and it would be easier to regroup. I'm guessing that regrouping will be natural and cliques won't form easily, because X is unlikely to give the same number of quests every session, so redistribution will be the norm. One should also bear in mind that all parties doesn't need to be of the same size, and must be adjusted according to quest difficulty and the size of the reward. Ideally, quests that promise few dice should be tackled by parties of two to four members.

5. Arbitration and conflict resolution

To solve the potential issues of item 3., a way of distributing spare dice must be in place. Which mechanism exactly isn't that important, because I imagine there will be relatively few conflicts. A few suggestions:

(a) Adding spares to a pool and redistributing them later as the pool grows and there are enough dice to satisfy all the tied members. This would be hard because one would have keep track of all past ties.

(b) Reverse voting: members of the party vote secretly for whom they don't want to receive the spares. The loser of the ballot (which can be conducted via smartphone, I suppose) earns the dice. The winner may feel disgruntled, but he can join another party in the next session. The downside is that this may introduce some bad blood among members.

(c) Pre-agreed rule: each party decides on a tie-breaking rule that everyone agrees to prior to the quest, be it luck, age, alphabetic order, whatever, so long as everyone admits the rule as legitimate. I would also add that if a tie happens among the same people as in a previous quest, the winner of the previous tie-break loses their claim for one round.

6. The fate of question mark dice

One of the most important promises Dongtae made to potential guild members was to help them to become A rankers. However, X issues question mark dice quests very sparingly. Suce rare items are a very likely source of conflict. The very quests that include them as reward are likely to be claimed by several people. So here are my suggestions:

6.1. Dongtae must always be in the question mark die party (I'm assuming only one will come per quest). His status as an assets derives from the trust of his commanded that his participation will increase the odds of success, and they must feel that they owe Dongtae for helping them get the die. And of course, Dongtae will not lay any claim to the die.
​

6.2. The other members of the party must be the strongest dicers at the time. How many of them? Depends on the quest: the number should be decided on agreement, but Dongtae must have final word on the composition of the party.​

This is important, because if they only earn one question mark die, this means that for the members of the party who end up not getting it, this session will have been pretty pointless, as they will also get no ordinary dice. On the other hand, for strong members who are not included in the question mark die party, there is the consolation that they will at least get ordinary dice on the next party - thus making them stronger and so more likely to be included in a future question mark die party.​

6.3. If the quest fails, Dongtae distributes his session quota of ordinary dice among the party members as consolation prize.​

6.4. If the question mark die quest is offered to only one or some members - that is, if X decides to be mean and not give a quest that applies to everyone - said member or members must be included in the party, even if they are not among the strongest. They will also be given the option to pursue the quest on their own, without even Dongtae's help. But if they fail, there must be no complaints. And if they accept to share the quest with the rest of the guild, they must submit to the awarding rule, no complaints allowed either.
​

6.5. A rule for awarding the die - this is probably the most important part. The question mark die is a game changer: if there is even a semblance of unfairness in the awarding, resentment will fester very quickly. I'm tempted to say that this is best left to luck, but even luck can lead to conflict. I'm thinking specifically of the case when one party member other than Dongtae is decisive in completing the quest: in that case, Dongtae may decide (but he also may not, and this is where his wisdom will have to act, as there is no fail-proof rule of thumb to reading the mood of the party) to hold a direct open vote on whether the other members object to the decisive member earning the die. If a majority raises no objections, that person gets it. If a majority objects, or the quest is accomplished in a truly cooperative way without anyone standing out, they can use luck, and I particularly like the irony of using synchronised, white dice: whoever gets the highest number, gets the question mark die.​

7. The role of new A rankers

As new question mark dice are obtained, their users will become Dongtae's peers - although they will be considerably weaker than he by that time, if all of the above rules are in place. Whether we like it or not, they will form an elite within the guild. How they behave and are employed may decide the future of the guild: the whole thing can fall apart, or the virtuous cycle of getting stronger and earning more dice can get a serious boost. In addition to teleportation and time pause, the other available skills are probably invisibility, flight, telekinesis and seeing through opaque objects. (Luckily for Dongtae, time pause seems to be the strongest, with the possible exception of invisibility.)

It's very difficult to make rules that work for such disruptive objects, but here are some suggestions:

7.1. At the very least, there should be a rule stopping them from forming a clique. As more A rankers arise, they should become quest party leaders and work separately from one another and with other B rankers and wannabes.​

7.2. A one-die quota from the party may be created for them, too, and they would still be included in the other distribution rules of item 3.​

7.3. If a new question mark die quest appears, the only A rankers that can participate in them should be Dongtae himself and the ones who got them directly. Non-A rankers can only be admitted in the quest party if they also got the quest directly from X or by consent of the other A rankers. In that case, the die will be distributed to a non-A ranker under the rationale that the more A rankers, the better for the guild.​

7.4. And if the event comes that only A rankers get a question mark die quest and no outsiders are allowed, the first A ranker to become a "double-A" (if accumulating supernatural skills is possible) must be Dongtae. This will be hardest to swallow, and there's where Dongtae must make his superiority clear. Remember, this cannot be a democracy.​

And that's it.

If you haven't abandoned reading in disgust by now, you must be thinking: WTF? Is this person insane? Why don't they just look at the raws to see what happened to the guild? Why go to the trouble of writing a treatise on constitutional law for a damn manhwa?

I admit it, I am a little insane. The above exercise was interesting irrespective of the series, because it is cool to think of government models. And of course I don't think anything similar to the above was or is in the author's mind as he creates this series. I would be first to start banging my head against the wall if he wrote a chapter outlining the above.

But that's the problem, isn't it?

Dongtae is most likely just going to invent some idiotic rule as "share dice equally from a pool" and go with the flow, solving issues as they appear.

And this is bound to end in disaster, because all of the problems that the above code tries to solve or mitigate would start operating at the same time. Sponging, resentment, cliques, pursuing quests without telling the guild, you name it.

And of course that is why X was laughing madly when Dongtae announced his plan in chapter 38. IT CANNOT WORK. If it magically does in the manhwa, it will be due to poor planning by the author or some deus ex machina nonsense. Simple rules cannot solve complicated situations that change continuously. Complexity begets complexity. X is counting on some vicious entertainment soon. So the whole exercise allows me to predict that the guild will end in utter failure - or the manhwa will become nonsensical.

(Well, it is also possible that the author will sidestep the issue by introducing events that make the guild irrelevant. I wouldn't be upset by that outcome.)

And I am not even considering Dongtae's naïveté. He thinks X of all people will cooperate!

X may not be ubiquitous or omniscient, but relative to individual dicers, he is almost both. So he is in a perfect vantage point to issue lots of innocent-looking quests that, if pursued simultaneously, lead to harm coming into unrelated people's way. For an analogy, refer to the bank robbery scene that opens Batman: Dark Knight. A good puppeteer like the Joker (or X) can play their pawns and kill everyone as he pleases, without any of them knowing the full picture until it is too late.

X may not be outright evil, but he is amoral at the very least. If it entertains him, anything goes. The flippant way in which he treated Byungchul's death should have sounded the alarm to everyone, Dongtae most of all. It didn't, and I predict things will get ugly. The only dicer who seems to understand what's wrong with X is Taebin, but he seems to have adopted a "whatever" attitude and keeps a low, noninterfering profile. That attitude has forced him to flee before, and will keep coming back to haunt him, I'm afraid.

Of course, Eunju understood everything from the very first moment. Let's hope she hangs in there until Dongtae comes to his senses. Well, Mio can also bring some stability in, but I need to know more about her before I can make my mind up.

Unfortunately, I believe there will be tragedy before any of that happens.

And now, in face of chapter 40 and 41...

Spoiler

... yep, I think I was right. Dongtae only created a simple rule whereby he decides who gets the dice in the quests he has been helping with.

And Mio has clearly realised that it won't work. She was even gentle enough to intimate it is a utopia. The author wasn't even very subtle about it. While Thomas More's ulterior reasons for coining the word are the subject of speculation, Wikipedia says that he used many ironically derived names in his book Utopia, seeming to indicate that the very idea was nonsense.

Still, I think Mio is as deluded by the possibilities offered by dice as Dongtae. That doesn't bode well.

I'd also point out that the author is slowly reinforcing the notion that X displays preferences in his distribution of quests. And meanwhile, Taebin is cossetted in a library reading books about game theory?

As for the flashback, I'll refrain from trying to interpret it too much for now. Superficially, it seems that Taebin met X in a few occasions and that the "give me your life" sentence is perhaps a little more literal than I expected.

As usual, I cannot wait for the next chapters!

 

[shaheer]

Frankly i like mio more than Enju, Enju seemed to be false sweet when she said i liked you better before her face was clearly saying that. Not to mention grossly misunderstanding dontage on her part. While Mio actually saw through things and dontages motives.
Also we are seeing some back story of tabein and a mysterious cloaked guy. Wonder who it is may be the X himself

 

[kendama]

Long comment on Eunju and Mio, defending Eunju. So if you dislike Eunju, this may be of no interest to you.

Spoiler

Actually, Eunju did not say "I liked you better before". She said "I liked you before". There's an important distinction.

I have given that scene some thought. It would have been perfectly horrible if Eunju had said something like that out of the blue. But out of the blue it wasn't. Let's recall the scene:

i. Eunju manifests her joy in recognising a person whose absence she had noticed: "So you are Mio! I worried because you didn't come to school in a while. So you became a Dicer."

I don't know if it is only I that has this impression, but that sounded perfectly reasonable.

ii. Mio replies ironically that Eunju is not talking about how pretty she got or talking behind her back about her becoming a different person.

In my opinion, Mio is the insecure one. She is probably fed up of people reacting to her change with false compliments and spiteful remarks (the boys in the previous chapter were pretty horrible). So she cannot believe that Eunju behaves differently, that it doesn't even cross her mind to comment on her physical changes. And thus she put Eunju in a very embarrassing situation by mentioning other people's reactions.

iii. Only then, because Mio seems to want an answer, Eunju remarks that she did not have any objections to how Mio was before.

If she had said she liked Mio better, I agree, I'd have said "Come on, Eunju! Respect Mio's efforts to improve herself, at the very least! Can't you see she was dissatisfied with herself before?" But she only said that she liked her, not implying that she doesn't or doesn't as much now. Because Mio forced her to say something, Eunju tried to say something polite that reflects her own thoughts. The way I interpreted that scene, Eunju hadn't even thought of comparing "previous" Mio to "current" Mio. Mio is Mio, period, beneath the surface she is still the girl Eunju knew and liked.

And when Mio screams "Don't give me that bullshit!", she is only revealing her own frustration and insecurity. It does not cross her mind that to Eunju it may be not bullshit. People who are convinced they are ugly and worthless sometimes react violently to expressions of sympathy, because they think the other people are lying. What they think is something like "You liar! How can you say you like someone as ugly as I!" Sadly, it never occurs to her that some people can see through appearances.

A thing that I've noticed among people who undergo cosmetic surgery is that some seek constant reinforcement from other people. They want them to notice, to point it out, to make compliments, because they need reassurances that they have improved, that their efforts have paid off. That's a mark of insecurity, in my opinion. I think the same dynamics is at play here.

I think I understand Eunju a little differently because I've known people like her. One of my greatest friends is like Eunju: in high school, she was a beauty, a top student, very popular and equally kind to every person she knew. It's not that she tried to be perfect or ingratiate herself with everyone. She just treated everyone humanely and dispensed neutral esteem to all colleagues, irrespective of who they were or what they looked like. Even in adult life, she continues to be unprejudiced.

Many people accuse Eunju of insouciance. They say Eunju is at fault for failing to notice other people's suffering. But I wonder how they would like her to behave. I mean, have they considered that it didn't matter to her that Dongtae was short and freckled, or that Mio was chubby and wore glasses? That she was just as ready to be their friend, and enjoy their company? I'm not saying that she is unaffected by personal appearance: she fell for Taebin for his good looks, after all. What's important about Eunju is that she doesn't let physical appearance cloud her judgement of people. If Taebin had revealed himself a bastard, she would have ditched him. How do I know that? Well, because she was the only one who tried to go past Byungchul when he was blocking the staircase while the class bullies were fighting Taebin. She is unafraid of standing up to power and defending a moral standpoint. She is the only one to have confronted X, after all.

I also try to consider Eunju's flawed judgement of Dongtae's reasons and motives from her standpoint. The situation among Eunju, Dongtae and Mio is a textbook example of a love triangle: A (Dongtae) loves B (Eunju) and C (Mio) loves A. Because B is unaware of A's feelings, she is less perceptive of the meaning behind his actions, and we cannot blame her, because A tries his best not to let her know, even more so because B is already in a relationship with D (Taebin). As for C, because she is in love with A, she follows A's bahaviour much more closely than B does. And C also follows B's behaviour closely, because she is afraid B might start reciprocating A's feelings and C fears this most of all.

So the reason Mio understands Dongtae's behaviour is not because she is generally more perceptive than Eunju. It's because she is directly interested in Dongtae, in a way that Eunju isn't, because Eunju has a boyfriend already and doesn't want to think of Dongtae that way. Actually, in chapter 19 Eunju tells Dongtae not to be too kind to girls or they will interpret it the "wrong way". So she may be somewhat aware of Dongtae's attention, but she has already rebuked it and is not giving it more thought.

In other words, Mio is in a vantage point relative to Dongtae and Eunju. Incidentally, so is Taebin, but contrarily to Mio, he has no reason to make Eunju notice Dongtae's feelings. In this kind of triangle, B is always the last one to notice because she is the only one not fighting with unrequited feelings. It's a staple of literature, cinema, TV, comics, you name it. I can list dozens of situations that play out exactly like that.

We may want Eunju to notice Dongtae, and think that it is way too unfair that she doesn't notice the one man who is trying hardest to earn her love, but this is Dongtae's fault, not Eunju's: he is the one hiding his feelings. Mio has given him the solution. She has walked up to him and told him: "let's go out in the weekend". Of course, Taebin is in the way right now, but if by any chance he and Eunju break up, full disclosure is Dongtae's best shot.

Also, we have to consider that Mio fails to see the situation from Eunju's point of view. To Eunju, what she saw was Dongtae being rewarded with a die right after saving her. What else could she have thought? Mio rightly pointed out that the creation of the guild (and I would add, helping Eunju even after getting the die) proves Dongtae's real intention, but I think that Eunju can be forgiven for not realising that, given that she was in the middle of a very traumatic day. She makes mistakes after, but she seemed ready to reconsider after being told all that by Mio. The fault is not failing to realise, but failing to reconsider, and of that Eunju is not guilty (at least yet).

As for the cloaked person, I think we have strong evidence that it is, indeed, X, since that's the conclusion to be drawn from the dialogue between Taebin and Byungchul. And I may add, X is brewing some very foul thing to happen soon.

 

[shaheer]

I dont really think that the fact of Dontage being hopelessly in for enju is a secret tbh she should be able to connect the dot even Mio got it and asked him blatantly.
I dont really thing mio was that much into self insecurity after she changed she came and saved her to pay up and square up also she likes dontage still spilled out the fact that all that he is doing for Enju while she has the feelings for him.
Incidentally before this did dongage and mio had any confrontation of any kind ? like him helping the old her for her to be head over heels ?
if so can any one post the chapter ?
Ne way though i like the casual day to day life and the complex relationship that they are having i would be more than happy if the pace went to combat again and show us more about the recently acquired power dontage has

 

[kendama]

There is no evidence whatsoever of what Mio's feelings for Dongtae were before she became a Dicer. The only time they are shown together is when Dongtae and she collide in chapter seven. There is no indication that she had been following him and she appears in only one panel afterwards, in chapter 10.

Spoiler

Personally, I don't think she had a crush on him before he became a Dicer. All indication is that she only started to feel drawn to him after he improved his physical appearance. I'm not saying that to criticise Mio: as I keep saying, looks are a fact of life and no one is above them (no, not even Eunju; she fell for Taebin due to his looks, after all). But the author may be trying to establish a contrast between the two girls: Eunju, who treated Dongtae well and was kind to him even when he was the official loser of the classroom; and Mio, who only approached Dongtae after he had become handsome (and she had become beautiful, too).

I'm not saying that Mio is shallow or that she only cares for appearance. She is clearly capable of deeper thoughts and of seeing through appearances, to the point of realising Dongtae's reasons for creating the guild and guessing what his feelings for Eunju are. Clearly, what Dicership did to her was similar to what it did to Dongtae: she became more confident and assertive, and thus had the courage to approach the man she likes. In fact, the reason she might have fallen for Dongtae, even before she became a Dicer, if I were to guess, was that Dongtae, by becoming handsome, strong and popular, may have drawn her admiration as an example of conquering one's own shortcomings.

Mio, even though she didn't understand how he did it, might have seen Dongtae as a beacon of hope: a man with a personal history similar to hers, a class outcast who managed to become everything Mio dreamed of being. And when she became a Dicer, she might have understood what had happened to Dongtae, and followed his footsteps. So Mio's love for Dongtae might be due to his example. She may also think she is the ideal girl for him, since she understands how his life was before (in a way Eunju couldn't) and has equally embraced Dicership as a way of escaping her life of low self-esteem and solitude.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, this is a situation of the blind leading the blind towards a precipice. Because both Mio and Dongtae are equally thankful for the opportunity given them by X to improve themselves and achieving some happiness, they haven't given the intrinsic dangers of Dicership much thought. I mean, Dongtae continues to engage X in conversation even though he has very fishy evidence of X's involvement in Byungchul's death.

 

[Jammin]

I've been away from this series for a while and just caught back up.

A lot of pretty emotional contradictions in play. The Dongtae and Mio thing has a lot layers to it. If Mio really did like Dongtae before he was a dicer and he never noticed because he was so focused on "the pretty girl" Enju, what's that going to teach him about himself? And if Mio only liked him after he became a dicer and is reminded of who he was before, how will she feel about that? Either way there is an undercurrent of "Did I look at this person the way others looked at me?" buried in there somewhere.

And while Enju remains the one constant. I get the feeling she's hiding something too. Up until this arc I had been thinking of her as some type of Mary Sue, someone who was just born with a pure heart, but now I'm thinking there's a lot more to her story than that.

 

[shaheer]

I've been away from this series for a while and just caught back up.

A lot of pretty emotional contradictions in play. The Dongtae and Mio thing has a lot layers to it. If Mio really did like Dongtae before he was a dicer and he never noticed because he was so focused on "the pretty girl" Enju, what's that going to teach him about himself. And if Mio only liked him after he became a dicer and is reminded of who he was before, how will she feel about that? Either way there is an undercurrent of "Did I look at this person they way others looked at me?" buried in there somewhere.

And while Enju remains the one constant. I get the feeling she's hiding something too. Up until this arc I had been thinking of her as some type of Mary Sue, someone who was just born with a pure heart, but now I'm thinking there's a lot more to her story than that.

Definitely there will be a past story for that scar, I am guessing child abuse by some step father kind a thing on her memory. I dont like her generic attitude towards the whoel events tbh. What will more interest me is what will happen when she know that tabein is a Dicer too and much higher level than dontage is.