The Veteran Swordmaster’s Stream (Novel) - Chapter 22
Chapter 22
The moment he stepped across the boundary, he could perceive that something had changed.
And as if they had been waiting, the guards rushed at him.
Seo-jun reflexively tried to draw his sword from his inventory with his right hand.
However, his left hand floundered in the empty air.
‘I won’t get used to it right from the start.’
– lololololol
– What are you doing?
– Even if it’s Mr. Unnamed, this is a no-go.
– It can’t be helped but be difficult for a normal person.
Seo-jun took backward steps with an awkward gait, clumsily drawing his sword with his right hand.
And swung it.
Clang!
– Oh?????
– Huh? Why… a parry?
– He’s hitting that even when his senses are swapped? lololol
Seo-jun smiled and swung his arm once more.
Clang!
“Yes, I’ve got the hang of it.”
Seo-jun quickly became accustomed to the sensation.
For Seo-jun, who controlled his body down to the millimeter, it was something that required only a bit of conscious effort.
Although his reaction speed had slowed down.
A gap of this size could only be a major mistake in a fight against a master; against NPCs, it was an amount that could be easily ignored.
“Ah, this game is easy.”
Like a right-handed person trying to write with their left hand, Seo-jun brought his sword to the flying fireball.
Though it was awkward, he traced the grain perfectly.
– trembling trembling
– Seriously, is there anything this streamer can’t do?
– It’s a stream setup
– lololololololol
“Honestly, I haven’t seen a game as easy as SitC. You just have to go and fight.”
There was always a way.
Seo-jun walked forward step by step and finished off the mage.
Slash.
– Is this that thing where if your body is good, your brain doesn’t have to suffer?
– lololololololol
– I’m so damn jealous of his physicals
– In the first place, is there even any other game you’ve played? Stop flexing!
Whether because he had completely adapted after that, Seo-jun repeated the exact same things he had done on the fourth floor.
Putting random junk from around him into the test tubes of experimenting mages.
Snatching books from absorbed mages and closing them without marking the pages, and so on.
– Seriously, why are you doing this?
– ???: I’ll pretend I didn’t see you, so please just go!
– Extremely malicious lolol
Of course, Seo-jun had a reason for doing this.
He was testing whether anything in particular changed depending on their reactions.
To be honest, Seo-jun possessed a level of skill that made it difficult to find enjoyment in a game’s combat difficulty.
Furthermore, if the opponent had been human, there would have been some fun in teaching them, but Dawn of the Assassins was not a game centered around PvP.
This was because, in the first place, this game was not created with combat in mind.
The minute details.
The open world.
Seo-jun found these aspects interesting.
Finding the grain was the same.
“Well, unfortunately, I already found the stairs to the sixth floor. Let’s go right up.”
After looking around the fifth floor, it felt as though he had already checked all the magic that could possibly appear from the fourth floor.
Of course, it would have been better to search thoroughly, but since when did he care about a magic spell or two?
Missing that would not prevent him from finding the grain anyway.
– What is unfortunate?
– The remaining mages are sweating bullets right now, praying for him to just go.
– Finding it unfortunate is the real madness lolol
As Seo-jun left the fifth floor area and climbed the stairs, his senses returned to normal.
“So it works like this.”
Clenching and unclenching his right hand, Seo-jun climbed the stairs while adapting to his returned senses.
The next floor was Slow.
It was a debuff that slowed down the body.
The moment he opened the door and entered, he felt as if iron bars were placed on his body.
It felt as if gravity had suddenly become more than twice as strong.
He even felt fatigue spreading through his entire body.
It was a debuff that others considered to be much lower in difficulty compared to the Confusion of the fifth floor.
However, Seo-jun thought that as far as combat, not stealth, was concerned, this Slow debuff was just as difficult as Confusion.
“Hmm. It’s a bit frustrating.”
Seo-jun began to move by predicting the enemy’s attacks in advance.
This was because he judged that otherwise, it would be easy to get hit while trying to dodge.
Rumble!
Rocks rose from the ground.
The sharp tips of the rocks rushed rapidly toward Seo-jun, aiming for him.
And Seo-jun’s sword clashed with the tip of the approaching rock at the exact right timing.
The magic split along the grain.
Seo-jun killed the guarding mages while neutralizing their magic.
After that, he quickly found the stairs to the seventh floor.
– Man, just watching this makes me feel sluggish too lololol
– It was fun when the stealth builds got slowed down, but watching a guy who does unrivaled combat play get slowed down is so damn frustrating.
– Skip it, skip it, skip it quickly
“Yes, reflecting your opinions, I will skip the sixth floor.”
If it had not been for the stream, he might have looked around leisurely, but Seo-jun did not particularly mind.
Rather, as he climbed the stairs, Seo-jun was having other thoughts.
‘All these environments that this game creates would have been great for training in my past life.’
Was it not thanks to accumulating experience in these diverse environments without worrying about death that the level of virtual reality users had become so high over the course of just ten years or so?
This thought occurred to him because people who possessed a level of high skill that would have been impossible to achieve with just ten years of training in his past life were active as professionals.
And the low barrier of access to martial arts must have also played a part.
Unlike in his past life, where martial arts were the exclusive property of a special few, anyone could easily access them just by entering a capsule room.
“I’ve already arrived at the seventh floor.”
The debuff here was Darkness.
Vision was completely blocked.
Seo-jun threw the door wide open.
Seo-jun could see the stairs leading up to the eighth floor on the opposite side.
“Oh, there’s no need to look for the way on the seventh floor.”
This was probably a consideration from the developers, who judged that it would be impossible to find the stairs to the next floor when one’s vision was completely blocked.
Even so, it was not easy.
Two mage NPCs were visible in the middle of the long corridor.
As they had on the previous floors, they waited only for Seo-jun to cross the threshold.
– Does he die here?
– Honestly, Darkness is going way too far.
– How are you supposed to do anything when you can’t see anything?
– Just scale the outer wall even now
– Even Spider-Man couldn’t do this lol
Seo-jun looked at the fussing chat window for a moment, then smiled and took a step forward.
Recalling all the senses he had gathered on the previous floors.
In an instant, the screen was replaced by a space of pitch-black darkness.
The only thing visible was Seo-jun’s own body.
Huuuu.
In a silent world where even a soft breath could be heard loudly.
Whoosh!
There was the sound of a fireball being generated.
Recalling the shape of the corridor, Seo-jun began to walk forward slowly.
‘Head.’
Swoosh!
Seo-jun tilted his head to the left, and something brushed past the space where his head had just been.
He felt a sensation of heat.
And a second later, the residue of red mana traced the trajectory of the magic that had already passed, showing it as a solid line in the dark space.
‘Is it a visual effect? The presentation is beautiful.’
Rumble!
Spinning his body in that state, Seo-jun drove his sword into the rock protruding from the wall and split it.
Glowing brown powder scattered in the dark space.
Rustle!
He threw his body forward, avoiding the vines crawling on the floor.
Whoosh!
This time, there were two.
After rolling forward and naturally rising to his feet, he dodged one by slightly tilting his body and destroyed the other with his sword.
Crackle!
Red sparks flew.
Crack!
The sound of freezing magic being generated was heard right in front of him.
Seo-jun immediately swung his sword from bottom to top, aiming at the shafts of the not yet fully formed ice arrows.
Capturing the sound of the mage whose magic had been destroyed stepping backward, he brought his sword down right next to the empty air where blue powder was falling.
“I hear everything.”
After that, he began to run quickly.
‘Up? Down? Or both?’
The mage who had just died was not the only one who had created ice arrows.
The mage waiting in front of the stairs had also been casting ice arrows at the same time.
The problem was that the sounds overlapped, preventing Seo-jun from capturing it properly.
Seo-jun tried to run as fast as possible to finish them off before the magic was generated.
However, he was late.
Whoosh.
He felt a faint flow of air being sucked into the magic like a whirlpool.
It was a sign that the magic had been completed.
Still, it was fine. As long as he felt the wind, that was.
Swoosh!
‘Fortunately, they came within range. Three shots.’
Seo-jun tilted his body sideways in mid-air and brought his sword down.
Two projectiles passed through the positions where Seo-jun’s head and legs had been, and he felt a cold wind following them.
And the arrow flying toward his heart was blocked by Seo-jun’s sword and fell to the floor.
He had grasped the position of the arrow through the movement of the wind.
He began to stroll through the darkness leisurely once again.
Step, step.
Only his footsteps echoed in the dark silence.
“Assassins are originally stronger in the dark.”
– Excuse me. This isn’t being in the dark, you’ve just been blinded, you know?
– For real lololol
– Assassin? No. In the dark? No.
– Holy Roman Empire meta lololol
– ‘That country’ which is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire
Whoosh!
Right next to Seo-jun, a spell was cast once more.
Grab.
Seo-jun grabbed the mage’s arm.
“Kuaaaaek!”
The casting was naturally canceled.
– Spider-Man was real, and he is streaming on Travel right now!
– ???: You can’t deceive me anymore
– FYI) Streamer has never been deceived in the first place.
Seo-jun finished off the mage just like that, then stepped onto the stairs and looked back.
As the darkness receded with Seo-jun at the center of the pitch-black world.
The corridor Seo-jun had passed through came into view at a single glance.
“Wow. Fortunately, I dodged them well.”
All the things that had looked like glowing powder in the darkness were indeed the remnants of magic.
– Did I just watch a circus or a game?
– This is seriously insane
– All of those were really magic spells and he actually dodged them lolol I’m chuckling because it’s so ridiculous
Enthusiastic reactions went up in the chat window.
And donations also began to pile up in an instant.
Originally, he had configured donations not to appear during gameplay to avoid distractions, but since it was a short break now, it would be fine.
[‘ㅇㅇ’ donated 10,000 won!]
[So fucking cool.]
[‘Sipal’ donated 10,000 won!]
[Fuck!]
[‘Me who watched this live’ donated 10,000 won!]
[Am the winner]
[‘Armchair Director Bong’ donated 10,000 won!]
[Why are you filming a movie by yourself?]
“Now, thank you all for the donations.”
Seo-jun sat down on the stairs for a moment.
“But honestly, this is just… what was it called? Sound play? Anyone can do it as long as they know how to do that. Right? You guys can do it too, can’t you?”
He began to communicate with the viewers.
– Ah, here he goes again;;;
– Honestly, if you’re this good, you’re allowed to humble brag, but I still want to hit you
– The moment he makes just one mistake, everyone’s going to pounce on him lolol
– How is this sound play, it’s a superpower lololol
– I guess… I didn’t know how to do sound play after all…
Sound play refers to playing more tactically, such as listening to sounds and grasping information like the enemy’s location based on them.
However, what Seo-jun showed came across differently to the viewers.
It was as if.
[‘Is this that’ donated 100,000 won!]
[Is this that ‘visualization of hearing’ thing? I got a grade 9 in Korean, but I understood it perfectly.]
– The joke is insane lololol
– No matter how I look at it, the streamer is definitely a Korean teacher lolololol
– The synesthetic expression is insane lolololololololololol
– Fuck lololol
– Mom! I’m studying! Mom! I’m studying! Mom! I’m studying! Mom! I’m studying!
Seo-jun couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing too.
As expected.
Streaming was fun.