The Veteran Swordmaster’s Stream (Novel) - Chapter 54
Chapter 54
Raid.
It was a nickname given by the users, and its official name was [Deathmatch (NPC)].
The reason why it was a deathmatch was because the game ended if even one of the enemy general NPC or the user died.
Even so, it was not a simple one-on-one duel style.
Since the setting was a battlefield where a fight took place, he also had to find the enemy general, and other ordinary NPCs collided in various places as well.
“The most important thing in a raid is speed.”
Finding the enemy general quickly and killing them quickly.
That was the way to receive more reputation points and contribution.
– It’s a time attack mode.
– Let’s wait a bit and go when the information is released.
– The rankers will probably all do that lol
– Don’t start right away
– This is consulting.
Seo-jun understood what they were saying at once.
“It’s fine. Let’s go right away.”
The viewers were advising him to achieve a faster record based on the information gathered by playing the game after the information was released.
But Seo-jun decided to just do it.
In any case, he could not obtain reputation points in the first round.
This was because it was a practice round designated by the game company.
And Seo-jun thought there was not much difference between playing the game after obtaining information through others’ gameplay, and obtaining information while playing the first round himself.
‘I heard that rankers plan out their routes and traits in a short time and use even the first round as a rehearsal.’
In any case, Seo-jun lacked game knowledge, so that was not possible for him.
“Ah, and they said that in raids, you also need to know how to use resources efficiently.”
Since there were no recovery methods like bases in a deathmatch.
He had to rely on naturally recovering resources.
“Ah, the Great Art of Absorbing Stars only applies to the enemy general? Thanks for the advice.”
Listening to the detailed advice, it was not an environment where Seo-jun’s traits were highly advantageous. Perhaps it was even disadvantageous.
“For now, let’s go with the Orthodox Faction. We won’t be able to meet that Tang Clan guy from earlier anyway.”
Today was defense as well.
***
Seo-jun selected the same area as the previous day.
The game started, and Seo-jun opened his eyes inside a building.
After looking around, he tried to open the door, but he could not go outside.
Words floated before his eyes.
[30 seconds before the start of the Deathmatch]
– I wonder which sect’s NPC he’ll fight against.
– The building looks like a courtesan house, but it doesn’t seem to be the Beggars’ Sect. There’s no way those Beggars’ Sect bastards have the money to visit a courtesan house.
Hmm.
Seo-jun nodded as he read the chat while waiting.
It made sense.
[10 seconds before the start of the Deathmatch]
‘But are there no allied soldiers?’
Seo-jun had a question in the situation where he was left alone in the room.
‘If I had to fight alone, it would have been named an assassination, not a deathmatch.’
And without even time to think further about that question, as soon as ten seconds passed, an enemy holding a sword in his hand kicked the door open and appeared.
“Enemy general of the Demonic Sect! Die!”
Neat clothes. It was not a Taoist robe, nor was it a beggar. Then.
– It’s the Namgung Clan lololol
– Anyone know which Namgung Clan NPC came out?
– No idea, it’s only been a minute since it started lololol
For now, the identity of the Orthodox Faction force was revealed to be the Namgung Clan.
The enemy NPCs began to rush at Seo-jun as soon as they found him.
‘The location is a high and spacious building. And the enemy is the Namgung Clan. The target is the enemy general.’
Seo-jun checked the health of the martial artists.
Although not as low as the soldiers that appeared in the occupation war, it was definitely lower compared to users.
Seo-jun held his sword in a reverse grip and drew a dagger from his waist with his left hand.
Thanks to the Great Grandmaster, he possessed many weapons for free, and the dagger was one of them.
Carrying many weapons slowed one’s speed, but in the case of a dagger, that penalty was practically non-existent.
However.
‘Since I didn’t take any traits related to daggers, it will probably be inefficient.’
Anyway, since this was the first round, he had to gather as much information as possible.
‘The Great Art of Absorbing Stars isn’t activating.’
This was certainly a setback.
It meant that he could not make use of the trait until he found the enemy general.
‘Then the damage is…’
The enemy’s sword gradually grew larger and drew closer in his vision.
Seo-jun slashed the enemy with his sword while dodging to the side.
Half of the ordinary soldier’s health was depleted.
“With the sword, it takes two hits.”
He quickly threw a dagger at another enemy behind him.
The enemy’s health, depleted by about a third.
Seo-jun finished off the enemy with his sword and put the dagger back.
“The dagger won’t do.”
He had to find the fastest and most efficient route while exploring.
That was the core of today’s game.
– If he were from the Tang Clan, there are so many damage-increasing traits for flying daggers that it would probably be a one-shot.
– This is bad, if the Great Art of Absorbing Stars doesn’t activate, he’s just going to keep going in a traitless state.
– Want to change your martial arts? There are still 3 hours left lololol. And this is just the first round anyway.
Seo-jun went out to the hallway through the door the enemy had kicked open.
The building’s hallway was quite large, and when he turned his head to the side, the martial artists of the Demonic Sect and the Namgung Clan were colliding.
Seo-jun bypassed them and searched for the stairs to grasp the structure.
The enemies who spotted him abandoned their fight and rushed at him, but.
Chwaaaak!
They were cleared in just two strikes.
Since they were merely ordinary NPCs, no matter how many there were, they were nothing more and nothing less than a means to buy time.
“Let’s go down first. I should check how big the building is from the outside.”
Seo-jun descended the stairs while encountering martial artists, and soon realized that the place where he first started was the third floor.
On the first floor of the courtesan house, an even greater number of martial artists were colliding.
When Seo-jun came down the stairs and showed himself to them, the heads of the NPCs turned toward Seo-jun all at once.
And then, shouts burst out.
“Capture the enemy general!”
“Protect Lord HeavenlyDemon14!”
Beginning with those shouts, the formation of the martial artists began to change.
The Demonic Sect took a defensive posture while moving closer to Seo-jun, and the Namgung Clan did the opposite.
– lololol HeavenlyDemon14
– Change your nickname, it’s so distracting
– It’d be better to just use Seo-jun instead
– Seo-jun is already taken too
“Waaaaah!”
The NPCs began clashing again.
Seo-jun wove through the Demonic Sect members surrounding him, dealing with the enemies appropriately as he headed toward the main entrance.
“I don’t know if I can go out.”
He wondered if he would be blocked like at the start, but fortunately, there was an outside.
After going outside, Seo-jun turned around to check the height of the building.
It was high.
It was extremely high.
“Uh, it will be a bit annoying if the enemy general is at the very top.”
It seemed to be about thirteen floors.
Since there was no enemy general on the first and third floors, he had to search floor by floor from now on.
– Don’t worry, if another user finds the enemy general’s location while searching, we’ll tell you.
– Now this is a true viewer
– lololol excited at the thought of lying.
Since there was a possibility they might be on the first floor, Seo-jun looked around the outer garden before entering the building again.
“It’s the enemy general! Capture him!”
Since he had not cleared them all earlier, the same situation repeated, and Seo-jun dealt with them without using internal energy as he returned to the stairs.
“Indeed, since the Great Art of Absorbing Stars isn’t active and I can’t use much internal energy, even simple tasks take time.”
Seo-jun steadily carried out the exploration in accordance with that intention.
– In any case, the fight with the enemy general is what takes the most time.
– Even if the time to reach him is slow, his damage is high, so if he just catches the enemy general quickly, it will easily cover up the slow arrival time.
– What if even the arrival time is fast?
– That’s only possible for assassins with plenty of movement skills, like those in the Assassination Guild.
Before long, Seo-jun began to search the courtesan house floor by floor.
It did not take long.
Even without the Great Art of Absorbing Stars, Seo-jun’s basic attack dealt a fairly high amount of damage thanks to him choosing only attack-related traits.
And in fact, just giving Seo-jun a sword was enough.
As he searched floor by floor like that, when he arrived at the eleventh floor, Seo-jun felt that the atmosphere had changed.
From the entrance of the stairs, the martial artists of the Demonic Sect, who had become cold corpses, lay collapsed like obstacles,
And on the scorched walls, there were sword marks.
Above all, the surroundings were silent.
The clashing of weapons, the shouts and screams, all existed only as faint noises rising from below.
“It seems he’s here.”
He wondered if it was okay to make it this obvious, but assuming it was practically a time attack format, it seemed fine.
Since it was a game where speed was what was important, not finding and capturing the enemy general.
Seo-jun stepped into the hallway to check the eleventh floor.
He did not move cautiously or slow down, but that did not mean he let his guard down.
‘They said NPCs also use martial arts similar to players.’
There were two kinds of Namgung Clan martial arts in For Chivalry.
The Heavenly Lightning Divine Sword, which used extremely rapid attacks infused with the energy of lightning.
Another was the Conqueror’s Sword, which expressed the momentum of a sovereign.
The Sovereign Sword Form.
‘Depending on which martial art the enemy general has mastered…’
The fight would differ.
Pajijik.
As he turned the corner, a faint sound was heard.
Seo-jun turned his head,
“Here he comes.”
Before the words could even finish, a figure flew in.
***
The wall collapsed, and a shallow amount of lightning energy sparked on the floor in the form of static electricity.
The dust settled, and all kinds of soot and debris of the collapsed wall appeared.
“Got him.”
Seo-jun said calmly, looking down.
There lay the enemy general, fallen face down with Seo-jun’s sword impaled in him.
The NPC’s name was Namgung Cheon.
He was said to be one of the elders of the Namgung Clan.
Not that it was important.
– Seems way easier than the Rulers
– You shouldn’t compare them to the Rulers lol. Those were made specifically to be unkillable, while this is meant to be killed quickly.
– He catches him fast and well
Now that the battle was over, Seo-jun was surveying the surrounding terrain when he read the chat window and spoke.
“If I don’t catch him quickly, I die. It’s a time attack in the truest sense.”
– Real, it is a time attack in the truest sense lol. He’s playing a death game alone lololol
– Still, his kill time is definitely good, so his record will probably turn out well.
Seo-jun then looked around the twelfth and thirteenth floors as well.
There was nothing there.
After that, he infused his sword with internal energy and slashed the wall.
He checked if he could do it as well, after seeing the walls collapse from Namgung Cheon’s sword qi.
Kwakakang.
It was possible.
Chat telling him not to damage property popped up. Seo-jun lightly ignored them. Subsequently, he experimented with several things.
“Fortunately, it gives me time to experiment. If it kicked me out immediately because the game ended, I wouldn’t have been able to test things like this.”
Having finished the experiments, Seo-jun dusted off his pants, opened the game window, and clicked to exit the game.
After coming outside, Seo-jun did not play the game immediately.
– So what are you going to do?
– The record came out to 17 minutes. Though it’s meaningless since it’s the first round anyway.
– Veterans usually aim to finish within the 5-minute range.
Seo-jun looked at the chat window.
It was because no proper method came to mind.
“Whoa, under 5 minutes?”
– Yeah
– Crazy fast
– That’s the optimal route, optimal traits, optimal weapon, and optimal strategy.
– But those guys start at 9:00 or 9:30 after spending 2 hours just planning their strategy.
– Ordinary users like us just go to whatever NPC we want to fight with peace of mind lol
They said that ordinary users who just enjoyed the game without planning strategies like that took about 15 minutes.
And if their skills were lacking, there were even cases where they couldn’t clear it at all.
Seo-jun calculated the time it would take to run up to the eleventh floor as soon as he started on the third floor.
And even the time to defeat Namgung Cheon.
‘It seems like it’ll come out to around 6 minutes.’
Although the time to defeat the enemy general itself was fast, the delay in reaching him was long.
Since he had to defeat the enemies blocking him here and there.
They were enemies who could be killed with just two sword slashes.
However, their numbers were large, and there was the fact that the stairs were disconnected on the fifth and eighth floors in the middle.
‘5 minutes and 6 minutes.’
It was a mere one-minute difference, but considering the competitors who spent two hours planning strategies just to shave off a few seconds from others, it was highly lacking.
‘Should I just watch what others are doing?’
Looking at the current viewers, it didn’t really seem like it, but at any rate, others might think of things he hadn’t even thought of.
‘Something I hadn’t even thought of…’
Seo-jun weighed his advantages first.
Attack power. Internal energy recovery speed. Control ability.
And.
‘Huh?’
Suddenly having a fun idea, Seo-jun curled up the corners of his mouth and, as usual, went ahead and did it first.
Without knowing the fact that there were quite a lot of people keeping an eye on him due to the previous day’s issue and because he was playing the deathmatch game from the start.
“Everyone, I think four minutes will be enough.”