Chapter 249
80 bars.
The moment the sword vanished.
For an instant, strange frames flashed across the viewers’ screens.
It was a moment so brief that it lasted less than a second.
The screen flickered as if the world’s greatest pro gamer from the old days had pressed and released the Tab key in 0.1 seconds.
And then.
Seojun began walking leisurely toward the spot he had chosen.
The others belatedly ran to find their own positions.
Thick red lines overlapped again and again, covering the map, leaving only white spaces barely large enough for one person to stand in.
“Run!”
Those spaces were scattered here and there across the map.
The moment Seojun, the only one who had walked to his position, turned around to look over the entire map, the sword came surging rapidly across it.
Taewoo and Dangso, who were either in its path or running toward safety, were struck as the sword passed and collapsed with a pop.
“Let’s do it again. Hahaha.”
Seojun laughed and pressed the retry button. Proceeding with four people was difficult.
Each hit was so threatening that it took nearly 70 percent of one’s health, and the raid members, who were still unfamiliar with the patterns, couldn’t deal damage freely. As a result, they lacked the necessary damage output.
“Let’s take it slow.”
Each attempt currently took about seven minutes to reach the 80-bar pattern.
And this was their third attempt, meaning twenty-one minutes had passed.
- The other parties are struggling quite a bit too lololololololol
- Everyone’s trying to watch and dodge, but except for the raid leader, it’s insanely tight lolololololololololol
- If you’re more relaxed than the guy who sees it in 0.1 seconds, you’re basically a god lmfao
For now, they still had plenty of time.
And during the first phase, it seemed that many people had turned on their streams.
Not just streamers, but ordinary players as well.
They probably thought the important part was the second phase.
Seojun tended to agree.
When everyone voted to retry, they immediately returned to the moment right before them—the instant before the sword descended.
“All right, let’s go!”
Taewoo shouted energetically.
“Let’s dodge properly this time. Hohoho.”
Ppoppi Appa said the same.
They drove their skills into the sword falling from the sky, steadily reducing its health.
When Seojun glanced over, the other team members’ movements were gradually loosening up.
It was visible even to the naked eye. The health bar was disappearing faster.
When one was too busy dodging, there was no time to deal damage.
But once they learned that when the sword suddenly lay flat and pulled back slightly, it would rotate along a crescent-shaped path in a particular direction—
And that when it stood vertically and tilted slightly backward, it would plunge straight down from there—
They could dodge with a slight movement of their feet and cram in their attacks.
‘Good.’
Seojun had done that after seeing it just once from the beginning, but there had been no dramatic change.
He was a beginner, after all.
In the meantime, the boss’s health fell to 80 bars.
‘Five minutes have passed.’
- Keep up with the tempo!
- The composition is solid!
- Seems like they’re finally starting to follow the tempo?
- They’re getting into form.
- But it’s still only the first gimmick, right?
The sword vanished from right before their eyes.
Seojun checked the map again and moved leisurely.
- Lmfaooooo no, seriously, blink already lol
- How the hell does this guy do it? lololol
- This guy seriously seems to be living life at 0.25x speed lolololololol It makes no sense no matter how you look at it.
- For real lol
- All the mysteries have been solved. He doesn’t remember a past life—he just lives at 0.25x speed!
He turned around.
This time, Taewoo and Dangso had taken their positions.
But Ppoppi Appa, whose joints were weak, and Geomsin119 were still running.
“Now, now, it’s okay.”
The moment Seojun finished speaking, the sword began moving rapidly, and the two of them collapsed.
The sword itself was not large enough to cover the thickness of the red lines, but because of something like magical power, people died even without directly touching the blade.
“Let’s do it again.”
“Whew. I didn’t think we’d get stuck here.”
Ppoppi Appa awkwardly placed a hand behind his head.
“Exactly. Hehe, this is hard. I’m sorry.”
Geomsin119 apologized as well.
All the raid members said in unison that it was fine.
It wasn’t as though one person kept making mistakes.
Taewoo spoke up.
“Everyone except Seojun still hasn’t mastered reading the attack through shared vision. If the safe spot happens to be far away, they just die. Everyone except him is in the exact same situation right now.”
“That’s true. It’s frustrating, but I have no choice but to admit it. I’m still having trouble reading it too.”
Dangso nodded.
“As expected, Seojun is incredible. He mastered it in one go and just leisurely walked to his position.”
That was Geomsin119 praising him.
“Haha. It doesn’t matter if it takes us longer, so let’s take it slow and master things one at a time.”
“Sounds good, Seojun!”
“The viewers keep telling us that no other raid has managed to keep every member alive yet. Huh? They say someone did it? And why are they cursing me?”
It seemed a team from another stream had succeeded.
But the viewers were laughing.
- Lolololololololololol
- You rotten raid leader lololol
- This is hilarious.
- They found the solution too lolololol
“What is it?”
“Why? Come to think of it, our viewers are laughing too.”
“Really? Then what’s the solution?”
Ppoppi Appa said something to Taewoo, who read through the chat and made a sour face.
Unfortunately, since the conversation between the two could be heard, no one in Seojun’s chat was withholding the solution.
“Why the face?”
“The solution, Seojun.”
“Yeah?”
“They say you’re not supposed to watch and dodge.”
Taewoo spoke in a hollow voice.
“?”
“Of course, you do watch and dodge, but apparently there’s a specific pattern. You take up your position in advance and then move toward the safe spot. If you don’t do that, half the people won’t make it unless they’re unbelievably fast.”
“Really? Then why have we been doing it this way until now?”
“……”
“……..”
“According to the viewers, someone kept doing it leisurely at a ridiculous speed, so they never thought to look for a pattern. I wonder who that someone could be, Seojun.”
Everyone glared at Seojun.
“On top of that, he was the first person in the universe to solve the pattern, and he told everyone to watch and dodge because it was easy, drilling that idea into their heads.”
I see.
- In short? The raid leader poisoned the well!
- Just lol You can’t use this guy as the standard lololol
- Don’t try to watch and dodge like someone. Stand roughly in position beforehand and get ready lolololol
“All right, let’s see what the pattern is!”
Seojun ignored the quiet conversation between 119 and Siksik Corner behind him.
“Do you think we can get world first?”
“Impossible.”
Siksik Corner shook his head.
* * *
The locations of the safe zones during the 80-bar pattern appeared random, but there was a certain degree of order to them.
For starters, one always appeared at the top and bottom, in the twelve o’clock and six o’clock directions. The exact locations were genuinely random, but this rule never changed.
Then, when the map was divided in half, three appeared on the left and three on the right. One or two of them could appear near the center of the circle.
Usually, if one appeared near the center, two would appear close together in either the top or bottom area farthest away. If two appeared near the center, one of the remaining spots was random.
Therefore, if one person waited at the top and bottom, and two people waited at the middle of either side before watching and running, the tight timing became much more manageable.
They immediately decided on their positions.
During a raid, the boss continued moving wherever it was aggroed.
Therefore, as they approached 80 bars, it was important to keep their assigned positions in mind so they could start from there as soon as the pattern began.
And now that they knew how to solve it—
For their raid group, something like that was easy.
“Nice!”
“Everyone finally survived!”
“Let’s go all out again!”
Whoosh.
The sword swept across the field at high speed, but no one died. The raid against the sword, which had shot back toward the center with a bang, continued.
Its health dropped rapidly.
The sword’s attacks changed slightly from its previous basic attack pattern, with altered trajectories and speeds.
“Let’s take it slow! Not much time has passed yet!”
There was a time limit on the raid.
More precisely, once a certain amount of time passed, the raid became much more difficult.
That was because of the universal rule of game raids: the enrage mechanic, also known as Overdrive or Enrage.
Enrage was a buff applied to the raid boss once the time limit had elapsed.
Sometimes its speed gradually increased or its damage grew stronger, while in other cases it simply used an attack that wiped out the entire party.
The raid could simply end in failure once the time limit passed, but that could feel somewhat half-hearted.
There were many reasons for adding an enrage mechanic, but usually, it was to prevent players from clearing raids with setups that had far less damage than users of similar gear but could never die.
If one made a build with extremely high sustain and health and defense, the difficulty of the raid plummeted.
So the game blocked that strategy.
They weren’t at the stage where they needed to worry about that yet.
Because they didn’t even know the later gimmicks well.
However—
“Whoa! Hold on, I got hit again! Why does this hurt so much?”
Taewoo was struck by the sword as it tilted sideways, spun, and moved across the field.
“I’m out of potions. Heal me, please. Hehe.”
Taewoo wasn’t the only one.
“Heh heh heh. It’s embarrassing, but I’m down to one potion now.”
Even with constant healing and shields coming from the supports whenever their cooldowns were available, they had nearly used all five of their potions.
This wasn’t unique to Seojun’s raid group.
Assessing the situation, Seojun spoke to Taewoo.
“The difficulty is pretty high. Want a potion? I still have all five.”
“You said you’d carry me.”
Why was he bullying him again today?
With that look in his eyes, Taewoo glared at Seojun while dodging the sword.
- You think he’s actually going to give you a potion? lolololol
- What a troll lolololol
- A swordly tale: this guy has been hit exactly zero times since the beginning.
- Holy crap, that’s terrifying lolololol
- Will he get hit in phase two?
Even so, the Red Knight’s Greatsword’s health continued to drop, and they succeeded in reaching the second gimmick without anyone dying.
Its health was at 40 bars.
The sword vanished again, and Seojun immediately changed his view.
But this time, something was different.
Usually, straight lines drawn from all directions would overlap and cover the map, leaving clean, empty spaces.
This time, there were no empty spaces.
Instead, the locations presumed to have been empty like before were merely colored a pale red.
Seojun sensed the crisis immediately and moved the observer’s position from directly above the field to its side, looking across the map. The team members, though flustered, moved toward the lighter-colored areas.
The observer wasn’t moving especially quickly.
And when the sword began its attack, the observer had only made it about halfway across the map. Seojun, who had never taken his eyes off it, immediately ducked his head.
The second gimmick required them to either duck or jump after taking their positions.
‘Would it have been easier to see if I’d looked from a diagonal angle from the beginning?’
He would have to check.
But—
“Oh, everyone died.”
Seojun pressed the retry button.
Once again, he was the only one left alive.
* * *
- Jin Seojun: 0 deaths (4 failed attempts) lolololol
- Jin Seojun: 0 deaths. And 0 hits taken lolololol
- This bastard… his health isn’t going down! Because he hasn’t been hit!
- That crazy bastard stayed alive at the end without losing focus for even a second.
- Other parties have at least seen the second gimmick too.
- No, more importantly, people in the other streams were dropping like flies. Even after drinking all their potions, the guy who said “But I survived, right?” and lived was insanely skilled.
- The sword’s attack speed is too fast. The attack patterns are difficult.
- Anyway, we know how to solve the second gimmick now.
- But why doesn’t this guy try deflecting?
- It’s a counter. If you counter, it turns around and attacks again from the opposite direction, so you can’t do it.
- Isn’t deflecting impossible for the same reason?
- It seems like deflecting might work, but we haven’t tried it yet. We’ll know when he does it.
For a very brief moment.
While the team members watched Seojun’s replay to confirm how the second gimmick had appeared, Seojun looked at the chat and answered.
“Deflecting, huh. We’ve moved on to that topic. First of all, the attack speed is too fast. You know deflecting is impossible when the boss is faster than me, right?”
- Yes.
- Yep.
- You mean it’s impossible?
“No, I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s impossible most of the time, but there are occasional moments when it’s possible. The difference is extremely slight. The developers probably made the attack speeds differ so that we’re supposed to deflect at those moments, right?”
- Aha!
- So it works?
- But how are we supposed to catch that tiny window when the attack speed slows down?!
- Skillfully!
- So that’s why it’s difficult?
“It would be difficult.”
- Fair enough.
- Yeah.
- Seems like the developers really went all out.
- They said it was going to be legendary.
- What can you do when they say the difference is insanely slight?
“For you all, that is. I always tell you. Anyway, from now on……”
Seojun was waiting.
Not until he could grasp the difference in speed. He had recognized that in a single glance.
He was waiting until his teammates became familiar with the pattern to some extent.
So that the raid could fight as efficiently as possible.
“The raid should become much easier. Oh, come on, don’t say you hope the raid leader fails.”