A skill description window popped up before his eyes.
[Spear Throw ※Spear Technique]
▶Damage triples when the skill activates.
▶The action command is ‘Throw the spear to hit the target,’ and the voice command is ‘Spear Throw!’
▶Cooldown is 5 seconds.
Stunning Life is a surreal action RPG. To use a skill, you have to execute the appropriate command.
"Good."
Seo Minjun raised the spear straight.
[Now face the Tutorial Boss!]
Along with the message, a giant monster with a height of 2 meters revealed itself ahead. It was like a crocodile walking on two legs, and it held a giant double-bladed axe in its hand.
[Tutorial Boss]
"Kwoooooah!"
Looking at the monster roaring thunderously while wielding a giant double-bladed axe.
Shwack!
He threw the spear.
"Spear Throw!"
Along with the voice command.
***
In truth, human athletic ability has aspects that are rather shabby in the natural world.
The strongest track athlete runs 100 meters in 9 seconds and is called superhuman, but a cheetah covers it in 4 seconds.
Antelopes jump 8 meters high; snow leopards leap 15 meters far.
However, across all animals in the natural world, there is exactly one athletic feat where humans possess overwhelmingly superior specs.
'Throwing.'
Humans are the strongest in the natural world thanks to their ability to throw with precision and power. Quadrupeds cannot throw in the first place, and even primates with better arm strength than humans are no match for them.
Why? Because the act of throwing is not done with just the arms and shoulders.
It requires a sophisticated movement that generates energy from the lower body muscles—from the calves to the hips—rotates it through the waist, and transfers it to the shoulders and arms.
Throwing is not done with arm strength, but with the entire body.
That's why no other animal, not even a gorilla much stronger than a human, can throw a baseball better than a human. Precision aside, not even in terms of distance.
Thanks to this, ancient humans had already conquered nature by the time they developed the 'spear throw,' even without firearms. Even elephants could not withstand that spear throw.
And a spear launched from the fingertips of a javelin throw world champion, a track and field athlete?
Call it a slight exaggeration, but it might as well have been an ancient human's missile.
Kwaaang!
With a heavy sonic boom, the flying spear tip pierced through the monster's neck.
"Keu-hak!"
[Hit a vital point.]
[Fatal wound]
[Bleeding status]
The Tutorial Champion staggered.
It tried to rush at Seo Minjun, but the spear stuck in its neck made it difficult to keep its balance.
And Seo Minjun was slightly taken aback by a new message floating before his eyes.
"What is this?"
[Transcendent Cast! 『Spear Throw』]
▶Activated by the spear's flight speed exceeding 100 meters per second.
[You have discovered the Transcendent Cast condition for the skill 'Spear Throw.']
[Spear Throw ※Spear Technique ※Transcendent Cast]
▶Damage quintuples when the skill activates.
▶The action command is 'Throw the spear at a speed of 100 meters per second or higher to hit the target,' and the voice command is 'Spear Throw!'
▶You can recall the spear using the Transcendent Cast combo command. The action command is 'Reach your hand toward the spear,' and the voice command is 'Return.'
▶Cooldown is 5 seconds.
Skills in Stunning Life undergo 'Transcendent Cast' when commands are over-input at a high difficulty.
It was as if the skills had metamorphosed to a higher level. Now the damage multiplier had gone from 3x to 5x, and a combo skill option had been added.
"So this was a thing."
Seo Minjun reached his hand toward the monster. For that monster, still choking because it couldn't pull the spear from its neck.
"Return."
He pulled the spear free.
Shwack!
The spear that came loose from the Champion's neck returned to Seo Minjun's grasp like Odin's Gungnir.
"This feels pretty fun in the hand."
"Kaaaak!"
Toward the Tutorial Champion making metallic sounds while clutching its neck.
"Spear Throw."
Seo Minjun hurled the second spear.
The 5-second cooldown had already passed while he was reading the Transcendent Cast message.
Kwajik!
[Hit a vital point.]
[Fatal wound]
"Keo-heok!"
The spear crushed the back of the hand and went through, piercing the already-holed neck again.
"Return!"
As Seo Minjun summoned the spear back.
Tadadadak!
He charged forward.
After dodging the axe the monster brought down.
Kwang!
He bashed its head with his shield.
Then he brought the spear shaft down vertically.
Jjeok!
The Tutorial Boss collapsed and couldn't move.
"For a final boss, that was simpler than I thought."
It was something that would make anyone who heard it jump in shock.
That tutorial boss had a set level of 15, and it was an opponent that required high-ranker level control for a new player to defeat.
But for the world's greatest athlete, it was not very difficult.
He was the human who utilized the greatest physique in all of human history better than anyone else.
"So it's really over now, right?"
Seo Minjun prodded the Tutorial Boss with his toes.
"Don't tell me it's gonna say, ‘Congratulations on clearing the boss battle, now proceeding to stage 4~' or something?"
Fortunately, it really was the end.
[You have defeated the Tutorial Boss.]
[The Tutorial has ended.]
"So it really is over."
Only after checking the message did Seo Minjun finally let out a breath of relief.
'Anyway, putting the boss battle aside, the difficulty up to stage 3 was insane. How do other people clear it?'
As he was thinking that, a message popped up.
[You are the first to clear the Tutorial!]
'So they couldn't clear it.'
Not even a single person had cleared Tutorial Stage 1.
Now he finally saw the messages he had missed while running frantically all this time.
[You are the world's first to clear Tutorial Stage 1!]
▶Tutorial Score: 10,000 points
[You are the world's first to clear Tutorial Stage 2!]
▶Tutorial Score: 10,000 points
[You are the world's first to clear Tutorial Stage 3!]
▶Tutorial Score: 10,000 points
[You are the world's first to clear the final Tutorial Stage!]
▶Tutorial Score: 20,000 points
In a way, it was only natural.
To be honest, Seo Minjun couldn't be confident he would succeed if he had to do Stage 1 again.
There was an aspect of having pulled it off through sheer fighting spirit and willpower.
If his opponent had been a human track athlete with the same speed instead of an AI-controlled swarm of mice, he might have lost. So Seo Minjun thought.
[Achievement Acquired!]
▶Tutorial Pioneer
(※An achievement for first clear has been awarded on a tutorial unbeaten for 50 years.)
└All stats increase by 30.
└Abnormal status duration is reduced by 50%.
[Achievement Acquired!]
▶Legend of the Tutorial
(※You are a superhuman who has earned the highest score in the long history of the Asla Continent.)
└Fame acquisition is doubled.
Another message popped up.
Two achievements.
To someone well-versed in Stunning Life, both were tremendous options, but Seo Minjun not only didn't know that, the following message briefly made his mind go blank.
'What is this?'
[Server-wide Announcement]
▶A new Legend of the Tutorial has been born. Congratulations!
▶Previous Tutorial highest score record: 1,820 points
▶New Tutorial record score: 50,000 points
[Server-wide Announcement]
▶A player who cleared the Tutorial for the first time has appeared.
▶The Main Scenario has begun.
"Server... wide... announcement...?"
Somehow, it felt like he had caused an accident.
***
"They say K-One Runners won't be able to cover the medical fees starting January next year. I got word that K-One Runners is disbanding......."
The administrative nurse said with a deeply pitiful expression.
"Yes....... I heard."
Seo Jeongin was depressed but tried to appear composed. She didn't want to add to the sympathetic nurse's burden.
"Goodbye."
She received her medicine and left the hospital. While taking the bus home, she took out her smartphone.
'Should I try streaming again?'
Back when she briefly streamed Stunning Life, she had been a promising rookie BJ. As soon as she started the game, she was called a 'face-cam game streamer' and became an issue because of her looks. Seo Jeongin had outstanding enough looks to model for various shopping malls and magazine covers like University Tomorrow.
There were various reasons she had quit streaming, but now she was thinking of trying it again, even if just that.
'Or should I get a job?'
While taking out her smartphone to search for the leave of absence application process, Seo Jeongin discovered an unexpected keyword.
[Real-time Trends TOP 10]
1. Legend of the Tutorial
2. Tutorial 50,000 Points
3. Stunning Life Hacking
4. Stunning Life Tutorial Hack
5. Main Scenario
......
"What is this?"
Tutorial score is points given based on the distance you run from the swarm of mice without getting caught in the tutorial. 10 points per meter.
And 'Legend of the Tutorial' is a type of achievement given to the person with the highest tutorial score.
In other words, when a new record is set, the previous achievement holder loses the achievement to the new record setter.
The previous Tutorial score world record holder was athlete Baek Jucheol, ranked 9th domestically.
He had succeeded in running a whopping 182 meters from the swarm of mice.
So his score was 1,820 points.
Baek Jucheol, who had set a new record exceeding the previous one by 300 points, had grown at tremendous speed using the buff from the 'Legend of the Tutorial' achievement, becoming 9th in the domestic rankings not long after his debut.
......
6. Baek Jucheol
7. Baek Jucheol Achievement Stolen
8. Baek Jucheol Score
......
He too was being mentioned in real-time search queries.
'Did Baek Jucheol really have his achievement stolen?'
And......
"Don't tell me this new record is 50,000 points?"
An absurd score was listed in the real-time trends.
"What main scenario?"
A new upheaval was happening in Stunning Life right now.
***
"Shit, did I cause an accident?"
Every community of Stunning Life had gone crazy.
All boards were seething with one topic.
- Tutorial 50k points lol, are they insane?
- No, does this even make sense?
- What's stage 2? Was there even such a thing?
- So the tutorial we were doing was stage 1, honestly does it make sense that someone cleared it? Those tutorial rat bastards are fucking fast and never tire.
Among them, a post by one player was receiving tremendous upvotes.
- (Breaking) Found an old news article, look at this
It was an interview with the developers from 50 years ago.
[Developer Interview on Stunning Life's Tutorial]
▶On Tutorial Difficulty
- In a VR game, what we worried about most was that players would have difficulty accepting 'death' in-game. So we decided to kill all players once in the tutorial. (laughs) A swarm of mice that runs 100 meters in 9 seconds chases the player.
▶If Usain Bolt ran, could he avoid getting caught by the swarm?
- Even a better 100-meter runner would inevitably get caught due to the limits of stamina. The swarm of mice has no stamina limit. Instead, we decided to convert the distance escaped from the swarm into points for rewards.
▶Are there other endings besides getting caught in the tutorial?
- Well, we entrusted scenario creation to the Super AI, so we don't really know about that part.
From the beginning, the tutorial was made to kill players. Because 50 years ago, the concept of virtual reality was so unfamiliar, and players at the time were naive enough to fear dying in a game.
It was like not being able to go to the bathroom alone after watching a horror movie.
Even when film movies were first made, audiences would hide under their chairs when an actor fired a gun on screen. It's the same context.
Although it is an in-game death, there was anxiety that somehow dying inside would cause problems to one's body in the capsule.
Because of that, on Stunning Life's launch day, millions of players exhibited the bizarre phenomenon of staying put in the village safe zone for a whopping seven hours just chatting.
And the developers, exhausted by that situation, created this insane tutorial.
'Fairly killing everyone once.'
They figured that once death experiencers accumulated in the tens of millions, no one would fear dying and would enjoy the game as a game.
That was the idea.
So from the start, the tutorial's purpose was to teach players about 'death.'
"No wonder those rat bastards were so damn fast—to the point where even a 100-meter world champion would have almost lost."
"Now I understand."
Seo Minjun let out a smirk.