Chapter 337
While Seojun farmed 15 wood items, Hayunho also farmed an additional 15 wood items.
It was a short time.
“Alright then, hand them over before you go.”
The reason Seojun had said "moderately" was because if he made excessive demands and tried to work him like a slave, Hayunho would have obviously chosen to just die.
If he died early on, there’s no telling where he’d respawn.
He needed to quickly gather with his teammates at the designated spot, and respawning far away would be a disaster.
In that case, working a bit and surviving was the best option, and both Hayunho and Seojun knew this well.
Hayunho dropped the items.
Seojun bent down and touched the block-shaped items, and the wood entered his inventory.
“Thank you. Take care, boss.”
“Yes. Thank you! As expected of our streamer! You’re so considerate. Well then, I’ll be off now. Hehe.”
Trying his best not to offend Seojun until the very end, Hayunho stepped backward.
“Ah, boss.”
“Y-yes?”
“By the way, were you aiming for first blood?”
“Ah, yes.”
Hayunho tensed up.
A predator is fickle. You never know when it'll thrust its ferocious jaws at you and sink its teeth in again.
For example.
Cheeky of you to go for first blood?
Something like that.
But Seojun simply said he understood and saw him off.
Stepping backward, as soon as Hayunho gained a certain distance, he started running toward the place his teammates had agreed to meet.
“Everyone, gather as fast as possible and build a base first. If we don’t, someone will show up and take everything we have. We too… if we just avoid that person, we can win! I saw a possibility!”
[What possibility?]
“The possibility that every team that meets that person gets ruined, and if we’re lucky, we can at least snag second place!”
Warning his teammates like that, Hayunho moved further away. Seojun left him behind and headed toward his intended destination.
It wasn’t the spot the team had marked to gather.
[Seojun, where are you going? That’s not the right direction.]
Looking at the map showed the real-time locations of his teammates.
So they could obviously see where he was going.
Thus, amidst everyone gathering at one point, it was natural for Baek Doyul to ask Seojun, who alone was heading in a different direction and moving away from that point.
“Ah.”
[Come quickly. Or could it be…?]
“That ‘could it be’ is correct. From now on, I….”
[Ha! This is it!]
[I believe in you!]
[Mr. Joam and Ms. Imua, please be quiet for a moment. Still, shouldn’t you at least gather something? Above all, early looting activities don’t typically involve meeting many people….]
“Ah. It’s not a looting activity.”
Seojun kept moving endlessly while explaining to his teammates.
His teammates were doing the same. While traveling, they’d chop wood and mine stone.
[Huh? Then what is it?]
Last is a looting game.
Thus, the teammates naturally assumed Seojun planned to rampage from the early stages.
Baek Doyul thought the same.
Their team had one less person.
Compared to the special forces team, they were two short.
Now, from Baek Doyul’s perspective, this seemed absurd, but still, they had two of the world’s best gamers on their team.
In any case, how should they get ahead of others?
The simplest answer can be summed up like this.
‘So of course, even pro gamer Baek Doyul thought I’d go looting.’
Drag others down and climb up yourself.
Isn’t that the only way?
[What are you going to do?]
[Yeah, I’m curious.]
The teammates couldn’t help but be curious, and Seojun, knowing this well, decided to explain in detail.
“Since the rich one is asking, I’ll specially answer. I’ve decided to subcontract. This game is made to be played that way.”
Seojun nodded to himself as he walked leisurely.
[Subcontract?]
“Yes.”
[What does that mean?]
“When others do the work, I take the resources. That’s it.”
If they refuse to listen?
Then they’ll have to die. Sadly.
[Oh come on, that’s looting.]
“I don’t engage in such barbaric acts.”
Seojun protested with a genuinely aggrieved expression.
[Ah, whatever. Do what you want.]
-LOLOLOLOL giving up
-Hey mod, you crazy bastard, what are you planning by locking in like that from the start LOL
-And yet look at him going so leisurely. He’s fattening up the prey, isn’t he LOL
Seojun said he got it and slowly walked toward the spot likely to have the highest foot traffic on the map.
The later he arrived, the more others would have farmed, so it was beneficial.
* * *
Last is a brutal game where, from early to late, the moment you see a hair you start fighting.
Proof that this environment is no different from a true wilderness.
But the very early game is slightly different.
Most tend to first build a base and then play.
Thus, even if they locked eyes, they’d often go their separate ways.
Also, they didn’t have weapons capable of shooting from afar.
However, if they quickly obtained a spear or crossbow, or if they were lucky enough to get a gun from a farm spot, the story changed from then on.
The Lu Bu meta would temporarily become possible.
While you couldn’t get high-tier weapons or armor from early-game looting, if you caught a few farming players, you could start off much more advantageously.
Of course!
Given that every team here operates on a massive scale, aiming for looting activities from the very early stages was a huge gamble.
Teammates would be positioned nearby, and in that case, no matter how many you caught, the moment you died it would all be for nothing.
So who would attempt early-game looting?
It’s more like if you spot an enemy while you’re farmed and have weapons, you won't back down.
Anyway, you have to be careful.
This statement even applied to the team of the game’s most seasoned veterans, who were dubbed the Looters.
They had played the game for over 10,000 hours, some over 20,000 hours, encountering each other as enemies and as party members, thus they worked well together.
[Let’s sweep through and head straight to the farm spot.]
They wouldn’t build a base. They were confident they wouldn’t die anyway.
Even if they died by bad luck, it was fine.
The items lost by the dead would be made up for by teammates, and even if they respawned in a strange location, they could make up for it decently while traveling to regroup.
Of course.
[Don’t be too cocky, considering who our opponents are. Set up sleeping bags in a decent spot. If we have the materials.]
“Because of the Hunter teams?”
[Yeah. The Hunter teams. Those guys are the real deal. Be careful, I said.]
[Aren’t you offended that they came here to hunt our game? We should hunt them.]
[We should hunt them. In our own way.]
Snickering lightly, they erased the resources of the area.
They were veterans, even using micro-techniques while performing the most mechanical, efficient, and simple wood and stone farming, all while looking around.
And those they were wary of.
“What about that side? The one with that streamer and the league pro.”
[Considering the level of their teammates and being one short, not really? I just hope they don’t get eaten by the Hunter teams.]
“What about the Special Forces team?”
[I guess the old men will have a rough time.]
There was only the Hunter team, which had invaded Last once before and shown their skills then.
[Guys, do you even watch the league? Haven’t you seen the history book?]
“Honestly, I was watching a gameplay compilation and turned it off. There are so many skills and it’s complicated. It’s hard to understand a game you don’t know.”
Indeed.
Most of these guys didn’t even watch the league.
10,000 hours—if you played 3 hours a day, that’s about 10 years, and if you played 10 hours a day, that’s 3 years, an absurd and astonishing amount of time.
And yet these guys easily surpassed 10,000 hours.
Did they have the leisure to watch other games?
“In that sense, isn’t it surprising that the old men might actually be awesome? Since Last has no virtual power or skills. Oh, a farm spot.”
As people agreed and entered the farm spot, an ambush occurred.
The farm spot was a jungle temple.
[Primitive guy with a crossbow approaching from the W direction….]
[I’ll handle it.]
[Ugh. Wait, I’m dead. Not just a crossbow, there’s also a wooden spear.]
They immediately moved in unison and began to form a hunting formation.
[Can’t see the enemy team yet. Enemy spotted. That crossbow and wooden spear mentioned earlier… I’m dead too. What the?]
But before they could properly respond, they began to be swept away.
[I’m down too.]
In Last, the dead don’t talk much.
So they asked.
“How many are there!”
[One. Head this way quickly….]
“Who the hell is it.”
A crossbow?
They had them too.
[The aim seems insanely good.]
[We absolutely can’t let him get close. The spear is no joke. Can’t dodge it.]
[Can we at least dodge the crossbow bolts?]
[Ah hold on, I’m down too.]
[It’s one guy?]
“That’s what I’m asking, is it just one guy!”
For the mission, as few deaths as possible, many kills, and resource gathering.
To achieve this, they were spread wide and sweeping the area’s resources, and already four had died.
The one farthest away shouted as he ran over.
“What the!”
[It’s that person. That person came. I’m dead too.]
‘Who is that person.’
Five dead. Already half had been swept away.
To an enemy presumed to be a single person.
Of course, things like this often happen in Last.
When?
When one side’s skill is overwhelmingly superior.
Because a fight in Last is a battle of creating advantageous tactical situations moment by moment.
The jungle temple was a threatening farm spot, with one massive temple in the center and the trees surrounding it.
[This is insane. Still, if we get him, we can make up for it.]
[No one even landed a single hit?]
“Give me the exact location!”
At the spot where his teammates’ corpses were strewn, his mind went blank at the scene that had suddenly fallen silent.
Should he have waited just 5 more seconds before coming?
[I’m down too. Behind. Insane spear techniques… He blocked arrows with his spear?]
Rustle rustle.
Three were left.
Was this even possible?
And at that moment.
[Both down, sorry. This is crazy.]
[No time to take cover. He attacked at a moment when taking cover was difficult in the first place.]
Were they not thoroughly familiar with this terrain?
They weren’t.
It was a camp they had been to many times.
The combination of spear and crossbow was something they were seemingly encountering for the first time, but was that combination enough to make them so helpless?
Then it happened.
“Good work, subcontractor employees.”
“……?”
Thwack!
A crossbow bolt flew from the side and pierced his shoulder.
It wasn’t a headshot. Judging by the direction the bolt came from, that spot was obscured by a tree.
And beyond the tree, that person—no, he was gone.
Where did he go?
“Now. Subcontracting company president? I’ve run out of bolts, so could you support me with some?”
For reference, the last surviving one wasn’t even the team leader, strictly speaking.
Before his eyes, the man who had annihilated them in an instant, the Asian man Seojun, appeared.
‘So that was that person.’
“You were alone?”
“Yes.”
“Of all things, we had to meet when we had no guns. You’re lucky.”
“Ah, I am lucky. Since I met a regular team in the very early game.”
He was irritated by the term “regular team” to describe them, but he didn’t get agitated.
He could take cover now.
The opponent had run out of bolts, so that’s probably why he came out to talk.
Maintaining distance to prevent him from approaching, he stealthily raised the crossbow he had pulled out.
“Aren’t you going to take cover? I do have bolts.”
“Thank you.”
The opponent put the spear into his inventory and spoke.
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
And the moment he confirmed that Seojun wasn’t taking cover, he pulled the crossbow’s trigger without hesitation.
Thwoosh!
If the bolt hit a wall, it would literally be handing over bolts to the opponent.
But the sight that unfolded afterward was bizarre.
“Thank you for the support. As expected, subcontractor support is indeed great.”
The flying bolt was caught. In front of his head.
Yet the opponent delivered his farewell with a calm attitude, as if nothing special had happened.
“I’ll gratefully take all the resources as well.”
This was the first encounter between Seojun and the Looters they would clash with in the future.
And at their first encounter, they were annihilated.