The Veteran Swordmaster’s Stream (Novel) - Chapter 4
Chapter 4
The action-adventure open-world stealth franchise game, Dawn of the Assassins.
On its opening day, this game surpassed two million concurrent viewers, and even now, a week later, it was still a hot topic on Travel.
In particular, this series, Shadows in the City, drew favorable reviews from people from day one due to its high level of freedom, distinct from previous works, and its gameplay centered on urban assassinations.
Comparing it to the most perfect open-world game of the past, people began to call it Dawn of the Assassins: Breath of the City—hereinafter referred to as Breath-City.
‘They said any method of assassination works.’
When assassinating, the target would die in a single blow, no matter how high their position was.
Instead, starting from the assassination target, the player had to personally grasp and choose everything, including the target’s daily routine, the assassination location, the entry method, the assassination tools, and even the escape route.
This high degree of freedom allowed for all sorts of bizarre assassination plays, which became the reason why the excitement did not cool down.
Because of this, even now, a week later, it boasted the impressive feat of having over 800,000 concurrent viewers.
[The download for has been completed.]
At the exact moment the notification rang, Seo-jun pressed the start broadcast button.
[A newbie broadcasting for the first time and playing a VR game for the first time with Breath-City. Anyone to backseat?]
It was the broadcast title Tae-woo had set for him.
‘Though it’s not actually my first time playing a virtual reality game.’
He had written it because Tae-woo told him that deep-sea-exploring veterans or game-worshipping fanatics wouldn’t be able to resist such a title, and that gathering people first was the priority.
It did not seem particularly reliable.
When a message stating that the broadcast would start in five seconds popped up, Seo-jun took his eyes off the broadcast window and pressed the game start button.
In an instant, the lobby was submerged in shadows, and modern European-style buildings began to spring up like mushrooms in the empty, dark space.
***
The starting point was a back alley.
‘Is it auto-run?’
Seo-jun’s body was performing parkour on its own.
He passed through the foul-smelling street, scaled a wall, and climbed upward along a window ledge.
Clatter.
“Who is it!”
He crossed over by riding a clothesline, and while stepping on a flowerpot placed on a balcony, he accidentally knocked it over.
However, Seo-jun’s body simply ignored it and continued to climb upward, hanging onto a flagpole that a household had put up.
After reaching the rooftop, he began to run somewhere, leaping across buildings.
As the atmosphere gradually brightened and he entered what seemed to be an entertainment district, the surroundings lit up brilliantly, and noise drifted over.
Hahaha.
Hohoho.
Ladies in gorgeous yet practical dresses and dandyishly dressed gentlemen briefly caught his eye between the buildings, as if reminiscent of the Belle Époque era.
And at some point, in front of him, stood a clock tower towering alone in the middle of the city.
Without hesitation, Seo-jun began to climb the outer wall of the clock tower.
‘Since I’m staying completely relaxed, it feels like I’m moving myself.’
However, only when he tried to tense up and move as he pleased did he realize that he had no control.
He repeatedly climbed upward like a climber launching their body up a difficult course.
Then, as he neared the top, there were no more handholds visible on the outer wall.
Whoosh.
In turn, he felt his heart drop due to gravity, and as his body was pulled toward the ground, the world began to spin.
Even as he fell like that, Seo-jun stayed relaxed and waited quietly.
Then, while his body was doing a somersault in midair on its own, it stretched out its right arm at an impeccable moment and shot a wire.
Click.
The hook caught on the top.
Zzzzziiing!
Along with the sound of the wire winding up, Seo-jun leaned against the rope and climbed up the outer wall of the clock tower as if running, reaching the summit.
Dong! Dong! Dong!
Right on time, the clock tower tolled, and crows, startled by the sound, flew up with a flurry of flapping wings.
Riding the cool night air that hit his face head-on, the laughter from the entertainment district he had just passed and the sounds of string instruments drifted in.
It felt as though all the dissonance within the night view harmonized to announce the start of the game.
As if showing him that this was the kind of city he would be playing in from now on.
‘Great presentation.’
He took a brief moment to look at the scenery like that.
“Hey, Dane. You could die on this mission.”
A beautiful, clear voice drifted over.
His body turned its head toward the sound, and a hooded woman walked out from the darkness behind him.
Her blonde hair, poking out from beneath the hood, fluttered.
“Heh. Christina. When has it ever not been dangerous?”
Seo-jun’s mouth opened.
However, his voice was different from Seo-jun’s own. It was probably the voice of the character named Dane.
“That’s…”
“If you want to kill someone, you must be prepared to die as well.”
“Right, fine. But be careful. They might have noticed.”
“Don’t worry, just head to the tavern.”
Christina nodded to show she understood, handed over a note, and spoke in a low voice.
“Nothing is true. Doubt endlessly.”
Seo-jun replied to this.
“Even chaos.”
Then, his body shot a wire to hang the rope on a nearby rooftop, and began to slide down it like a zipline.
And when he was almost there, he let go, landed on a lamppost, and jumped down again to settle on the ground.
The moment his feet touched the ground, Seo-jun felt a sensation of strength spreading throughout his entire body.
“Ah, ah.”
Was the tutorial over?
His words came out properly, and his limbs moved.
Ding—
[Tutorial Quest – Assassination Mission]
[Ettore is a high-ranking noble and a middle manager of a secret society that supplies street orphans to the Cabal and the Magic Tower.
Accordingly, the Assassin Order has assigned the mission to assassinate Ettore to their member, Dane.
Quest Clear Condition: Death of Ettore]
A notification sound rang out, and a game system window popped up.
Then, the path leading to Ettore’s mansion and Ettore’s location were displayed on the map that appeared.
“It’s telling me to assassinate him. For now, I have to go over there.”
Although this was Seo-jun’s first game other than the AOS genre, he seemed to know roughly what he had to do.
He first walked straight in the direction of the blue marker.
When his path was blocked midway, a notification popped up.
[Please climb up using the pipe.]
When he grabbed the pipe and applied a little force, he felt a sensation similar to when Dane had moved his body.
“So this is how the control assist works.”
However, when he completely let go of his strength, he slid right down.
[Please try jumping.]
It meant for him to leap across the buildings, but he grew curious about what would happen if he jumped incorrectly.
He plunged straight down between the buildings.
He felt a slight pain throughout his entire body.
[Please try crossing over using the rope.]
Because hanging onto the rope did not require much strength, he tried staying suspended.
As he held on for a bit longer, he felt his strength gradually slipping away.
He fell to the ground once more.
Around the time he was enjoying it, thinking of it as a novel experience, Seo-jun only then recalled a fact he had forgotten.
‘Ah, I was in the middle of broadcasting, wasn’t I?’
Still, not much time had passed, so how many people could there be…
[Viewers: 4]
He was surprised by the unexpected number.
They said normally not even a single person might enter even if one broadcasted all day long, so was it thanks to choosing the right game, or thanks to the broadcast title?
Feeling half-doubtful, he opened the chat window.
-At this point, he’s a real newbie lololol
-Ah lol, this is exactly why I watch newbie broadcasts.
-If this is acting, he deserves at least a Nobel Prize lololol
Oh.
The viewers were chatting among themselves.
By the way, thinking that they had seen everything that just happened made him feel somewhat embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I only just saw the chat.”
-hi hi
-nw. Watching a newbie jumping around alone and finding it fascinating was actually pretty fun lol
Three out of the four viewers were chatting.
[Patient Riding a White Horse]
[The Best Defense is the Winter Great Yellowtail]
[Public Toilet Brick Extortion King]
‘What interesting nicknames.’
It was amusing yet dizzying.
Were these kinds of nicknames trendy here?
Putting those thoughts behind him, Seo-jun first recalled the advice Tae-woo had left.
‘If there’s no one there, don’t obsess over the viewer count and practice filling the audio. If there are people, comfortably communicate to the extent that it doesn’t break the flow of the broadcast.’
The reason people came to broadcasts with low viewer counts was usually because it was easy to communicate.
The chat windows of large-scale streamers, often called conglomerates, zipped by so fast that messages were bound to get buried easily.
Seo-jun attempted to converse lightly while heading toward the target destination.
-Is the streamer a real newbie?
“Yes, that’s right.”
-Ah lol, I went and checked the streamer’s record, and it was clean. The account creation date was also 2 days ago.
“You can check that too?”
-yup
-You have to set it to private.
“That sounds like a hassle.”
Seo-jun did not feel the need to turn it off.
-Then how did you even turn on the broadcast if you find things so bothersome?
-true lol
‘It’s good that everyone is actively chatting, but is this okay?’
He felt the need to examine the chats of other broadcasts sooner or later.
“Hmm, I arrived quickly. What should I do now?”
-Open the note.
-If you open the note, you can view information about the mansion in 3D.
-Since it’s a tutorial, it’ll show you most of the information and the assassination route. Just do exactly as it says.
Surprisingly, they answered properly to this kind of question.
Following their advice, Seo-jun opened the note, and as the blueprint system was activated, a 3D screen like something out of a movie unfolded before him.
On that screen, he could zoom in and out of a specific point, and it was entirely possible to rotate the angle or modify the map.
Furthermore, not only the structure of the grand mansion, the secret passages, and the enemies’ locations, but also the route to infiltrate to where Ettore was, were displayed in detail.
The place where Ettore was located was the bedroom on the second floor, which could be considered the innermost part of the mansion.
“There are twenty enemies. The weapons in my inventory are… the Assassin-exclusive gauntlet and a sword stick?”
A sword stick was a weapon suitable for assassination and self-defense, designed with the inside of a cane serving as a sheath, hiding a slender sword that could be drawn and used in an emergency.
Additionally, blades were shallowly embedded so that the cane itself could slash enemies, and the tip was pointed like the end of a sword.
Embedded in the gauntlet were a hidden blade that popped out from the back of the hand and a wire that shot out from the wrist.
“Are the weapons just the default setup for the tutorial? In any case, I just need to kill Ettore, right?”
-yup
-Yes
-yup
Shall I give it a try first?
After holding the sword stick, Seo-jun walked straight toward the front gate.
However, chats opposing it popped up immediately.
-No, I said do exactly as the note says.
-Leave him be. Once other guys go to the front gate and die, they start climbing the walls on their own.
-Lord, here goes another one.
“Why? Can’t I go through the front gate?”
-No backseat. The streamer is a baby. We must just spectate.
-You can. Yup, open the front gate and go in quickly.
-They’re push-overs. They’ll die in one hit.
Their shift in stance was top-tier.
“Hmm, it seems I shouldn’t go through the front gate.”
-Ah, the streamer noticed, you guys.
-Lord, one was about to go, but stopped.
Seo-jun felt doubtful about the reactions of these viewers.
“But I heard you can do whatever you want in this game. Why shouldn’t I go through the front gate?”
-I’m telling you, it works?
-go go
-lololol stop teasing the newbie, you bastards.
As if unable to watch any longer, a viewer who had been silently watching until now typed in the chat.
-Usually, instead of sneaking in to kill them, just barging in openly and killing all the enemies is called a ‘Musou play’……
The viewer’s explanation was as follows.
When carrying out a mission in this game, while the target would die in a single blow regardless of how high their position was, if the player was detected, they had to engage in a hardcore, one-against-many melee battle with NPCs who possessed several times more HP than the player, so people usually tried their best not to get caught.
However, some veterans threw any assassination plans to the dogs and openly stormed in through the front gate.
The so-called Musou play.
The Musou play had a much higher difficulty than normal assassination play, even though there was no process of information gathering.
Shadows in the City received favorable reviews because it naturally guided people toward assassination play through this difficulty adjustment while still maintaining their freedom.
“Then is it impossible to clear the tutorial with that Musou play?”
-No idea. No one has cleared it yet.
-Rather than dumping their time into that, it’s more beneficial for streamers to just play other things first lol
-Someone challenged it for 10 hours before giving up, saying they would clear it after finishing their first playthrough.
-Even the community veterans haven’t posted any news about it.
“So it’s not impossible, then?”
Seo-jun focused solely on this point.
-yup. It’s probably possible if you have controls on the level of Shin Ha-yeon.
-Theoretically, you just need to dodge all of Ettore’s attacks within the time limit and hit only vital spots with all of your attacks.
-Super easy lol. Isn’t defeating Shin Ha-yeon something any dog or cow can do?
“Shin Ha-yeon? Well then, let’s give it a try.”
Seo-jun spoke confidently.
After all, even if it was an AI, a win was a win, right?
-????
-Do you even know who Shin Ha-yeon is?
-Catch that bastard who just chatted that any dog or cow can beat Shin Ha-yeon lolol
Seo-jun walked straight toward the front gate.
-Lord, in the end, he goes.
-Ah, newbie… do you really have to taste it to know if it’s poop or soybean paste?
-5 minutes later, the streamer (crawling on the ground): It’s correct that they won’t catch me if I do it like this, right? lololol
-lololololol