Genius Archer’s Streaming - Chapter 917

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Genius Archer’s Streaming Season 4 Episode 048
16. The Trap Card (3)
Among boss monsters, there are occasionally those types.
Cases where the minions beside the boss monster are more annoying or stronger than the boss itself.
This type had been quite common since the pixel classic game era, so I was aware of it as well.
The reason I seized this moment while Sang-gi Oh was in the bathroom was precisely because of that.
I had witnessed Sang-gi Oh’s combat power briefly, but I hadn’t seen Singihye’s combat power.
Even if this unknown variable remained, Sang-gi Oh’s combat power was a constant.
Therefore, the judgment was made that fighting without Sang-gi Oh would naturally be far more advantageous.
This judgment was absolutely correct.
“Twang.”
[Demon Slayer Sword]
After summoning the blade, the draw that followed.
From the comfortable café sofa to the moment the extended sword slashed horizontally across her neck was literally an instant.
The time of a single blink.
Whoosh!
As the wind split, Singihye’s hair fluttered.
“If you come to our entertainment company, we have various programs prepared for you….”
She was clearly speaking while looking at me and Balloon Gum.
So she was looking at me.
Yet she didn’t see it.
She couldn’t even react.
“…Huh?”
The moment her neck was severed.
“Eh?”
Balloon Gum was the same.
He didn’t understand why she had stopped speaking.
He only briefly thought—why would she deliberately pause like that?
However, it didn’t take long for him to realize he was wrong.
Thud.
“!?”
Because Singihye’s head fell to the ground.
Balloon Gum’s eyes went wide.
“Wh… What?!”
Then, all the NPCs around screamed in unison as if on cue.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
People scattered in all directions and fled.
Balloon Gum’s red hair was completely stripped away, leaving him bald. A ceremonial hat was placed on my head. As I stood up from my seat, a shaman’s robe fluttered. Balloon Gum too was now dressed as a monk.
‘Combat stance?’
We had entered combat.
Balloon Gum couldn’t understand what was happening.
“What on earth?”
He still hadn’t realized that Almond, standing right beside him, had just slashed Singihye’s neck with his blade.
“Mond, that person’s head just separated? What is this? A skill?”
Hahahahahahaha
-A skill? lmaooo
Haha, that’s hilarious!
-What skill makes your head fall off lol
Only when he looked at Almond did he notice the blade drawn in his hand, with crimson blood dripping from its tip.
“You, you’re insane! You did that!?”
Balloon Gum recoiled in shock.
“No, wait, when did you—!?”
“….”
Almond couldn’t respond to that.
He couldn’t hear what Balloon Gum was saying right now.
‘What?’
I was doing my best to wrap my head around this situation and make sense of it.
“Why isn’t that person getting back up?”
Isn’t the shadow mastermind supposed to be a final boss-tier enemy?
Even if there are cases where an assistant is stronger than the boss, they’re supposed to die in a single strike?
Something felt off. Very off.
But what looked strange to Balloon Gum was Almond’s statement.
“A, a psychopath!? You just decapitated someone and you’re asking why they’re not getting back up!?”
Hahahahahaha
-lol for real
I’m dying laughing ㅋㅋㅋ
-This guy’s actually insane lol
What the…?? lol
The viewers watching from Balloon Gum’s stream reacted the same way.
Then Almond clarified.
“That woman is the shadow mastermind. There’s no way she’d die in one hit.”
“…Huh?”
Only then did Balloon Gum understand what Almond was saying.
‘Now that I think about it, that makes sense.’
It was definitely Sang-gi Oh who brought her to the shadow mastermind.
So if Singihye is the shadow mastermind…
But she collapsed far too anticlimactically compared to Sang-gi Oh.
‘Wait… is that woman really the shadow mastermind?’
Wasn’t she the shadow mastermind from the start?
As this doubt flashed through Balloon Gum’s mind, a chill ran down his spine.
Singihye’s sprawled form was nothing more than the very image of a typical NPC.
That was when it happened.
A soft whooshing sound.
Singihye’s spirit drifted upward above her body.
She smiled and asked me.
[Why did you kill me?]
“Ugh, uaaaaaaah!”
Balloon Gum stumbled backward without thinking.
“W-what the hell is happening?!”
[Why did you….]
The spirit drifted closer, reaching out a hand toward Balloon Gum.
“I didn’t kill you!”
Balloon Gum nearly toppled over in terror.
Snap!
A familiar talisman stuck to the spirit’s head.
Crackle, crackle, crackle!
It was my talisman.
[Grrr…why, why, why, I, I, I…!]
Hahahahaha
Merciless creepy vibes
Are talismans a cure-all or something? lol
That’s fast lol
Singihye’s spirit convulsed as if electrocuted, spouting nonsense. Yet the spirit wasn’t destroyed.
This talisman was meant to temporarily immobilize the opponent.
I peeled the talisman away and asked.
“What are you? Weren’t you the mastermind behind all this?”
“…?”
Singihye turned to face me with a confused expression.
A smile.
She simply smiled at me.
[That couldn’t possibly be true.]

* * *
Manager Kim’s beer spray still clung to him.
Manager Kim stood dazed, staring blankly at the monitor.
He quietly clasped his hands together.
‘Heaven….’
Perhaps heaven wasn’t indifferent after all.
‘We haven’t been abandoned!’
He turned his gaze toward the manager.
“Uuuuuuuh!”
The moment Singihye’s head flew off, the manager’s rationality flew away with it, and he still hadn’t realized it.
“Manager.”
“Grrrrgh… Wh-what!”
“Manager?”
“How can the mastermind die in one hit, you crazy…!”
“That’s because she’s not the mastermind.”
“The mastermind… what did you say?”
The manager finally looked at Manager Kim.
“No, sir. That person is a decoy. The real mastermind never reveals themselves.”
“!”
“That person ranks even lower than Sang-gi Oh.”
Only then did the manager come to his senses.
“Insane. So….”
Manager Kim’s eyes gleamed as he grinned wickedly.
It was the first truly sinister smile seen since this game began.
“These bastards. They’ve finally taken the bait.”
If you kill Singihye, you lose all trust with Sang-gi Oh and can’t be guided to the mastermind immediately.
The game would inevitably stretch on much longer from here.
A kind of trap mechanic the game company prepared for those trying to clear the game too easily.
“A… trap?”
“Exactly.”
An old gaming adage flashed through Manager Kim’s mind.
YOU JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD
You have activated my trap card.
“Uh, uh-ahahaha? Uh-hahahahahaha!?”
Manager Kim burst into excited laughter.
“Finally! Finally our crazy production company is landing a hit!? Huh!?”
He stretched out his hand and shouted excitedly.
“That’s right!”
Clap!
Their hands met in a high-five.
“Damn those Game Busters bastards! How’s this for a counterattack?!”
“How’s this?!”
The two of them raised their beer cans and laughed so hard the office seemed to shake.
This was the Kim Kim Duo’s first and final counteroffensive.

* * *
Decapitating Singihye didn’t end as a mere incident.
It was a critical blow to the game’s progression.
An event that would inflict permanent harm on how things would unfold from here on.
“Damn it. Mond, we got played. Looks like we can’t kill this person. We need to figure out where the mastermind is!”
Balloon Gum cried out in horror.
He wasn’t horrified because the gameplay time had extended.
The situation itself was terrifying.
“Krraaaaaaagh!”
Suddenly, people throughout Meta Bugs began transforming into Thought Entities.
[Grade 1 Thought Entity]
They were Grade 1 Thought Entities, no less.
These were the same formidable Thought Entities encountered in the initial tutorial, in the subway.
But it didn’t end there.
Most of the employees suddenly began emanating black auras from their hands.
Crackle…!
[Grade 2 Priest]
Priests of some religion I didn’t even want to know about.
They began firing their black auras like bullets.
Balloon Gum and I had to hurl ourselves behind the sofa immediately.
Boom!
The sofa’s inner cushions exploded into the air, acrid smoke billowing up.
A Grade 1 Thought Entity drew out a long claw and slashed in all directions.
Screech screech screech!
At least it was a pattern I recognized. I tilted the table to block it.
Of course, even that was disposable.
Crash!
The table splintered into pieces and scattered.
-What the hell?
-Lol seriously
-Total chaos lol
-This place is definitely weird as hell
-Can you even survive this??
-Classic pattern when you mess with the wrong enemy lol
It was a sight commonly seen when playing solo RPGs with multiple branching paths.
I had accidentally aggravated an enemy, and now the situation had spiraled into complete chaos.
There was no real solution in cases like this.
“Um, Mond. Maybe we should just die and go back to the save point to try again….”
Simply dying and restarting was the right call.
Of course, if this were a second or third playthrough where I’d be in an incredibly powerful state, things would be different.
But for the first playthrough, this was correct.
Almond nodded as well. Even he couldn’t see a reason to push through this.
“Where is it? The save point.”
The problem was the save point.
“…?”
Balloon Gum had no idea where it was either.
He’d been bulldozing through the game recklessly, clearing it however he wanted.
Nobody knew where or how the saves were being made!
Almond nodded, taking Balloon Gum’s silence as his answer.
“We still have Sang-gi Oh left. Let’s give it a shot.”
“Wh, what?”
He wanted to try pushing through here?
From Balloon Gum’s perspective, it felt like a waste of time unless we went back considerably.
‘But… well… I do usually play that way.’
Still, Balloon Gum’s style was to show viewers the game as it progressed, as much as possible.
His suggestion to return to the save point wasn’t for his own sake.
‘Is Almond okay?’
It was because of Almond’s playtime.
“How are we supposed to continue from here?”
So he had to ask about a plan.
“Couldn’t we just torture Sang-gi Oh?”
It was actually a tempting suggestion.
“Would a game like this even have something like that!? Huh?”
There’s no way it would.
“Besides, even if torture were possible, these guys are complete pseudo-psychos! Didn’t you see Singihye’s head fly off and they’re still laughing? Would they talk under torture?”
“…Let’s clear them out first and think about it.”
“Cl, clear them? All of them?”
Just looking at them, there were far too many, and they were far too strong.
“I don’t remember who that Grade-1 Thought Entity is….”
Balloon Gum didn’t get a chance to speak.
Whoosh!
[Spatial Stride]
Almond suddenly vanished.
And moments later.
The Grade-1 Thought Entity was split in half.
Whoooosh!
-Scary
-Wow lol
-What?
-Haha shocked
-Who gave Almond the Rubisword~
“!?”
This?
While Balloon Gum was startled.
Almond finally answered.
“This is just a tutorial mob.”
It was only scary when a first-grade Thought Entity first appeared.
Not anymore.
“That… really? We… got stronger?”
“Yeah. Our spiritual power got stronger. Have some confidence.”
Right. I’m not that monk from before.
Balloon Gum suddenly felt confident and stood up from behind the couch he’d been hiding behind.
“Yeah, let’s fight!”
“Hmm….”
Almond actually found that appearance a bit more unsettling.
“Gum’s Commandment 13. Never trust your back to an overconfident Balloon Gum….”
“What am I supposed to do about it!”
-Lol no
-Hahaha
-Lololol
-Hilarious lol
-Lmao
“Thanks for the donation. I read the donation.”
“No way! Someone check his stream!”
-Lololololol
-Let’s just move on
-Lolol
-So cute lol
-Hodu only spins that fast for donations lol
-Donation lol
Anyway, two ghost busters.
Balloon Gum and Almond.
They resolved to face countless enemies in the middle of Metabugs, their backs pressed against each other.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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