Episode 340
He moved slowly and stealthily through the darkness.
The Slayer team's player-name, Atrax—the second player assigned to the western entrance.
Nine of them had come down to the basement and spread out to mark every entrance.
All for the sake of hunting down a single person perfectly.
Just as they had expected, the opposing team arrived, and they killed three players without difficulty. Truly, without difficulty.
All they had to do was quietly aim at the players moving cautiously, wait until they were spotted, and shoot.
That was what Atrax's teammates had done. It was the image they had been aiming for.
‘They said one person came through each passage? Then only the ones positioned near the entrances got to have any fun. But what did that guy do? Didn't they say there was only one person there too?’
Their prey—a teammate who had been positioned even closer to the western entrance than Atrax, and who had died all by himself like that.
It wasn't impossible to understand.
Perhaps the opponent had pulled off something extraordinary, or perhaps they had shown an opening.
According to their analysis, however, the opponent should never have shown an opening.
Seojun was someone who could overwhelm others through talent alone.
They acknowledged Seojun.
Being able to look at one's prey accurately was an important virtue as well.
That was why Atrax cautiously approached the place where his teammate had died, then stopped at the intersection.
[I’ll get there quickly.]
[Be careful. Don’t show an opening.]
[If you’re perfect, the opponent won’t even try anything.]
That was right. He was waiting for his teammates to support him.
The more people there were, the fewer openings could be exposed.
They covered one another. That alone could prevent the opponent from moving.
It was a form of defense.
‘It really is dark.’
Unlike other games, Last particularly emphasized aspects like this. It had inserted gimmicks involving dark places, almost like a horror game.
Of course, later on, it was possible to make flashlights as well.
‘Even then, a flashlight only tells the enemy, “I’m over here.”’
So he had to blend into the darkness.
And at that moment.
‘Huh?’
As he stared silently into the dark space, he thought he had seen the darkness ripple for an instant.
Had he imagined it?
Or not?
Had the anomaly caught in that instant when he blinked entered his vision because he blinked—or had he missed it because he blinked?
The basement was quiet. He couldn't even hear the sound of his teammates quietly approaching.
No, he heard something.
Sabrak.
A faint sign that someone was moving very close by reached him.
‘Could it be?’
An opening?
Had he shown an opening?
Praying desperately that it was merely his imagination, he turned to the side—and something hard touched his head.
Bang!
It was a crossbow.
The crossbow fired right in front of his temple, and when his health dropped sharply all at once, he saw it.
The hunter who gripped his spear near the base and slashed it across his body without mercy.
* * *
Last's users disliked the Slayer Hunter team.
Since users from all over the world were integrated in Last and could enter any server, the game itself was quite large in scale.
And naturally, Last tournaments were held fairly often.
No, they were held frequently.
Large corporations opened tournament servers for promotional purposes.
Mega-streamers opened tournament servers because they wanted to hold tournaments.
All of those events were festivals for Last gamers.
But Hunter teams never failed to appear at such festivals.
Of course, after they had hunted a few times, the organizers gradually began filtering them out. But Last users were growing sick and tired of the Hunter teams that kept appearing whenever they had just begun to forget about them.
[Those guys are here again. Look at the organizers accepting them all just because they don’t know any better since it’s being broadcast nationwide. Hahahaha! This is driving me crazy!]
They were a Hunter team that had either taken first place without fail or thoroughly disrupted the game.
How did the fact that they were appearing again this time strike the users of Last?
[Should we really just bomb their office or something? I’m seriously considering it.]
[These guys never even play our game normally, haha. Now they’re going to analyze the meta again.]
[Is their target that streamer?]
Naturally, the reaction was negative.
But such public sentiment was subdued in an instant.
Because another team had appeared.
[The veterans have gathered under the team name Raiders. Finally! Finally, we can get our revenge.]
Last's most renowned players had formed a team.
To defeat both Hunter teams and dominate Last!
From that moment on, Last's users completely erased the protagonist of the program from their thoughts.
No matter how much they heard about Seojun, it was a subject outside their interest.
The Last fanatics—the Last community was where they had all gathered.
Of course, the slightly less fanatical users were interested in what kind of insane plays Seojun would show in Last, but after the roster was revealed, most of them focused solely on the Raiders.
What would the best players show?
And how helplessly would the Hunter team be defeated in revenge?
Until now, the reason those renowned players had lost was that they had been scattered while the Hunter team had been united.
But what if they gathered together?
Last's users had no doubt whatsoever that the Raiders would win.
And yet.
[Whaaat????]
[They’re getting pushed back this badly in the opening fight?????]
[Wiped out?????]
[The question marks are everywhere, lol. Of course, it’s the host! Who even are these Raiders, lol?]
Their hopes were trampled.
From the very beginning.
It wasn't even the Hunter team that trampled them. It was merely one strange person.
[Subcontractor??? The Korean treated our hopes like complete trash!]
[Even if they can get revenge in the latter half, there’s no excuse for losing in the early game. The difference in skill is undeniable...]
[Can one person really do this alone?]
[Yes, it can happen. Do you want to see what the host has really been doing until now?]
And it didn't end there.
Koreans came flooding in, posting achievement videos and continuously upvoting them.
Naturally, this was bad-mannered behavior and something that did Seojun no good.
As Seojun's viewership had grown, so had the number of low-quality viewers.
Both in Korea and around the world.
There were even people who used Seojun not for his sake, but merely to cause trouble.
There were all kinds of people in the world.
Such fanboying and obnoxious behavior was enough to ignite hostility toward Seojun in less than an hour.
They say that fans create haters, after all.
Karma stacks.
The very thing Seojun usually built up so well—his viewers were piling it up on his behalf without his permission.
But then.
[Slayer is going to get absolutely destroyed!]
The moment Seojun began hunting the Hunter team in the darkness—
[Hmm......? He’s fighting well.]
[I hope Slayer loses. Hahaha.]
[It would feel pretty satisfying if he won! I’m starting to like him a little.]
Signs of a shift in public opinion began to appear.
* * *
Combat in a dark place took place with extreme stealth.
The shadows cast across the space served as cover, but the moment an attack was made, the sound spread and the cover disappeared.
If one ran over to help, one might miss the predator lying in wait. And since shadows were not cover that could stop bullets, hiding did not mean one could relax.
The rules had to be followed.
Other fights were no different, but here, the rules had to be followed with particular strictness.
There, after killing one more person, Seojun simply closed his eyes.
Then he briefly switched to a streamer-friendly setting that allowed only the viewers to hear him, not his teammates, and spoke.
“All right, it’s seven to one, and there are four of them. Shall I try doing this with my eyes closed? What do you mean?”
Either way.
“You can see everything—or rather, hear everything, you know?”
- LOL, sure, we believe you, host
- Host, we’ll believe you no matter what you say now~
- “What do you mean?” Nobody even typed that in chat. Now we’d believe you even if you said you were flying through the sky LOL
- Is it normal that I still want to ask what you mean?
- This noob’s Korean education is incomplete LOL
- For real LOL
“I was joking. All right, I’m resuming the hunt.”
He slipped into the darkness.
He had already searched through this entire area.
From the sounds he heard, the four of them were approaching.
They must have been flustered. They hadn't expected to hunt their opponents with ease, but still.
‘There’s a limit to what people can imagine. A limit in that they can’t go beyond their own experience.’
Seojun closed his eyes for a moment, blocking out visual information to maximize the processing of auditory information. After waiting briefly—
‘Before they gather.’
He began the hunt just before the enemies came together.
The optimal situation.
Bang!
He fired his gun while moving through the darkness. A diversion. At the same time, he threw the rock he had been given earlier upward, then slipped between the four people who had stopped moving.
Since Seojun could also hear the words exchanged between teammates, he made no sound.
So they wouldn't be able to distinguish one another, either.
Crash!
An echo rang out from the place where Seojun had stood moments ago. It was the sound of the rock hitting the ground.
Meanwhile—
Thwip!
He fired his crossbow, then stabbed with his spear. In the darkness.
At that moment, there must have been a conspicuous disturbance in the place where Seojun and the attacked opponent were, but the minds of the other three were focused elsewhere.
“He’s dead.”
Seojun slipped back into the darkness.
“This is assassination. Isn’t it?”
The more extreme the situation, the wider the gap between Seojun and ordinary people became.
Seojun could show the same optimal movements regardless of the terrain, whereas ordinary people could only see their skill deteriorate under extreme circumstances.
In other words, choosing this place as his hunting ground was a result of the limits of experience.
* * *
[The chat keeps bringing up “visualizing sound”! Could it be that this streamer used to be an ordinary Korean-language teacher, then found his talent as a streamer and started playing games like this? What an incredible story!! He looks young, but he used to work as a teacher too? I respect him!]
[Slayer is getting treated even more mercilessly than the Raiders earlier! Hahaha! This feels great!]
[Hmm, they’re our enemies anyway. Aren’t you all getting a little too excited?]
The Slayer leader was the only one left.
In the center of the dark basement, he calmly analyzed the situation.
‘He’s using every inch of the areas completely covered in shadow to move freely. There are no restrictions on him, while everything restricts us.’
That was why they had failed. No, they had lost. They had been hunted.
And that wasn't all.
He saw the silhouette of a person.
“Take this!”
Whoosh!!
He immediately raised his crossbow and fired, but as though it had been a mirage, the bolt merely ricocheted off the wall.
“Why did you shout?”
At last, hearing the enemy's voice, the leader let out a hollow laugh.
“That was my last bolt.”
He wanted to go outside immediately and see what had happened, how Seojun had moved.
If only there weren't a two-hour access restriction penalty.
‘Dying now is a serious blow. I’ll have to work myself to the bone today to make up for this.’
“I see. Then.”
The voice that had been coming from far away was suddenly closer.
He hadn't even properly heard any footsteps.
“Here.”
A hand suddenly shot out from the darkness.
There was an arrow in its hand.
Then the hand spread wide before retreating into the darkness again, and the arrow fell to the floor.
“……?”
“Good luck.”
“……?”
And from this moment onward—
Last users' favorable opinion of Seojun began to skyrocket.