Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 250

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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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Chapter 250

About half an hour in, people were starting to figure out what this raid was really about.

[Oh, the difficulty on this raid is insane?]
[Not insane, absolutely batshit insane]
[Even staying alive seems hard, so what are regular players supposed to do!]
[At least they let us enter, right?]
[Yeah, they let us enter and that’s it lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol]
[I’m just gonna watch. I burned through potions in a second and died immediately]
[So this is how important support is!!!! We went in with 6 people and no support and just gave up right away, did rock-paper-scissors to see who’d leave lol lol lol lol]

The most discussed aspect was difficulty.
The attack patterns were grueling, and even a single hit took more than half your health.
The next thing drawing attention was the counter mechanic.

[Does counter work or not]
[When you counter it just spins the other way and attacks again. Wow.]
[The pros are testing counter right now but none of them work? So why didn’t the director say it doesn’t work?]
[Evasion is totally out of the question lol lol lol lol lol]
[Maybe it’s just impossible in the system? Geomsin hasn’t even hinted at the gimmick yet?]

As people debated whether it was possible or not, attention inevitably intensified.
Other skilled players tried counter to make the raid easier, but they all failed.
Since they were only on the first stage, they could just skip past it—they didn’t need to obsess over raid proficiency—but with the second stage not even released yet, this was an important question.
And then Seo Jun made a definitive statement.

[???: The raid’s about to get way easier lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol]
[Honestly it sounds like he’s right, which is terrifying]
[Please let him fail please let him fail please let him fail]
[???: It’ll be hard for the rest of you, though]
[Fail fail fail you poisoned Racle!]

But contrary to the viewers’ desperate hopes that Seo Jun would fail—

[‘Geomsin1’ has disabled the Red Knight’s Greatsword!]

“Oh! Another evasion!”
“Let’s deal damage! Excellent work, Seo Jun! You’re the best! Kehehehehe.”
“We’re approaching forty percent health now, so let’s start thinking about positioning!”
The raid proceeded smoothly.
Seo Jun’s blade caught each moment the designer had allowed, precisely disabling the greatsword.
There were more windows than expected. Even with the same pattern, evasion became possible at certain probabilities depending on minute variations in execution—catch those tiny differences, and with similar speed, a single perfectly-timed sword strike would do it.
It could succeed easily.
“Pretty simple, right?”
Seo Jun explained this point.
For the record, he also spotted an unnatural timing where counter could succeed, but he didn’t mention it.
He was competing too. Even if it was only the first stage, there was no need to roll up his sleeves and help others ahead of time.

-Ah!
-Evasion definitely works then lol lol lol lol lol and man does it make the raid easier lol
-Damn they hit forty percent so fast
-Is this a carry? Is this a carry? Is this a carry? Is this a carry?

They were fighting at the seven o’clock position.
And then Seo Jun disabled it once more.

[‘Geomsin1′ has disabled the Red Knight’s Greatsword!]

The disabled sword stood rigid, driven into the ground, and took a barrage of skills from everyone.
Boom!
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The sword vanished.
They had been waiting. Observer was positioned at an angle to see everything, and teammates using skills from a distance were already prepared.
Seo Jun and Ppoppi, who attacked up close, were near the seven o’clock position anyway.
A second gimmick attempt—one that seemed to follow the same spawn pattern as the first gimmick, but would kill you if you handled it the same way.
“Let’s finish it in one shot! Fighting!”
Tae-woo shouted.
They took their positions.
Simultaneously ready to run or duck.
The sword sweeping across the map was over in an instant.
A timing battle.
But for the skilled—
Screeeech!
There were no casualties.

-One-shot success!
-Wow. Support hit forty percent so damn fast? Like what
-Eighty percent took five minutes for semi-skilled, seven for beginners, probably four for hardcore skilled, but these guys did it in two-thirty lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol
-The speed just getting to forty percent is even crazier?

The terminology for raid parties in Last Chronicle is this:
Heading party—a party that goes in knowing nothing and just headbutts the wall.
Try party—a party that looked up a guide and still headbutts the wall.
Clear experience party. Parties of those who’ve cleared before but are confident they’ll still die.
Semi-skilled party. Those who’ve gotten a bit of confidence but are still pretty confident they’ll die.
Skilled party. Those who almost never get hit by rough patterns and end in one-shots.
Hardcore skilled party. The kind that can clear with incredible proficiency even if a few people mess up and die or leave.
Meaning right now all the raid groups are heading parties.
Still, the raid groups going for first clear showed they had their reasons—they were good enough to reach eighty percent pretty quickly, getting that experience fast.
The average eighty percent clear time for those experienced groups was four minutes.
But after Seo Jun said it would get easier, they really did reach eighty percent in exactly two minutes thirty seconds as he said, and
Currently at forty percent, where other teams that haven’t mastered it take fifteen to twenty minutes, they’d just arrived in eight minutes thirty seconds—

-Isn’t this a power creep situation?
-Wait lol lol lol lol lol these guys are actually insane
-The director’s already hardcore skilled
-Wait, one of them came in for clear experience, not first clear? lol lol lol lol lol lol lol

It was a shock and a horror.
Not even an hour had passed?
The news spread immediately.
The raid itself isn’t competitive content, but the first clear race is.
It’s the viewers’ duty to keep spreading updates on other parties’ progress.
So when other streaming parties heard this, not just their own users but even casual parties started thinking: should we be aiming for evasion too?
‘Besides, counter didn’t seem to work anyway?’
That’s right.
Seo Jun had poisoned the race once again.
“Alright. Let’s go see the next gimmick.”
Every party member survived without a single death.
The normal pattern hadn’t changed.
‘Then that means—’
The sword sprang up another meter into the air, spinning smoothly, then plunged down to impale Seo Jun.
Seo Jun’s foot stepped back, and his body twisted naturally with it.
His arm rose and he swung his blade.

[‘Geomsin1′ has disabled the Red Knight’s Greatsword!]

No failure.
“Let’s attack.”
“Wow! Nice! You absolute madman! This is a real Seo Jun carry! This!”
“How can you even tell if it works or doesn’t work like that! That’s amazing!”
Dang So’s eyes lit up with delight.
He was happy because he got to cast Meteor.
Dang So’s job was mage.
And the mage’s strongest attack, the Meteor skill, takes a long time to cast, making it hard to land—but in a disabled state?
Boom!
The skills hit and health dropped sharply all at once.
“We don’t know when the next gimmick comes, so let’s be careful.”
From Seo Jun’s perspective, there seemed to be one more.
“Damn, I only used one potion this round. Insane.”
“You’ve got plenty left, Tae-woo.”
The sword began moving again.
There were attack patterns where you just had to twist your body to dodge, but also patterns where they had to dodge the sword’s complex rotations, move outside, only for the sword to sweep the outside too, so they had to dart back in.
After they ground down more health and ten percent remained, the third gimmick began.
And they failed, wiping completely.

* * *

“When the gimmick started, the sword was glowing in an invincible state from the center.”
119 spoke.
They were now analyzing the broadcast they’d failed, trying to extract every bit of information they could from the start point.
“Six orbs come out in different directions here. What’s this?”
“From the Observer view, there’s a red orb and white orbs. But from normal view it’s just black orbs.”
“Looks like we each have to destroy one.”
“When the sword uses a wipe mechanic at the end—when it covers the map with a wave from the center—did anyone watching from the Observer angle catch it?”
As various opinions were being thrown around, Seo Jun spoke up.
“I did. I confirmed it.”
“Oh. Let’s rewatch Seo Jun’s perspective.”
And they checked his replay and silently cursed.
Because it had happened and vanished in an instant.

-Lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol
-We’re gonna have to put it on 0.25x speed again like before lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol
-What a beast!
-Still, you’re the first party to show us the last gimmick!

“Hmm. That’s… young eyes and dynamic visual acuity……”
“Ppoppi’s dad, that’s not because he’s young. He’s just a straight-up madman.”
“He confirmed it in the blink of an eye. Let me slow it down to 0.25x and freeze it.”
“Still, it’s so fast it’s hard to see even in slow-mo. Hmm.”
While the party members were lost in mystery watching Seo Jun’s replay, Seo Jun spoke with ease.
“We just go back in and check it. Isn’t that how it works?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And we’ve got someone giving us a ride.”
“Right. Let’s go!”

-These guys’ raid time is damn fast just!

* * *

The solution was simple.
First, destroy the orbs to get a buff.
Then depending on the color of the orb as seen by Observer, either stick close to the sword or back away.
White means inside. Red means outside.
And this—

[Alright, everyone hear me? White means stick to the sword, red means back off.]
[Roger!]

Seo Jun said this right before the tenth gimmick, second attempt.
Using as evidence the fact that from the Observer angle, the inner part of the wave was white and the outer part was red.
“So it wasn’t about confirming. You’d already seen it and pretty much figured it out.”
“At this rate, first stage will be cleared soon.”
“No. We designed it so reaching ten percent normally takes about twenty minutes, but this party will get there in eleven without a single mistake. A heading party. That’s not what this raid was made for.”
Was nerfing meaningful?
Was the balance right?
Those thoughts wouldn’t leave the developers’ heads. The more they watched, the stronger the thoughts became.
That user hadn’t taken a hit yet from the raid they took pride in being hardest.
The only death was from the last gimmick failure—one unavoidable hit.
“The good news is they’re streaming continuously. Even if the raid clears faster than we expected—”
“The users will keep getting information from the broadcast, so that should offset some of the dissatisfaction with evasion, right?”
“Yes.”
At least the first stage is relatively easy. Expected clear time: four hours.
But the second stage is different.
As the final stage, it’s designed to take over three days.
So even if they go in first, they won’t clear immediately, and the ones coming behind can catch up.
As long as that party keeps streaming.
Meaning the race had just begun.

[Nice! We made it! Clear it fast!]
[The cosmic first clear for stage one is ours!]
[Hold on, we’re not done yet.]
[As expected, you stay level-headed, Seo Jun. Kehehe.]

“We’re going to clear it first. When do you think the second party will clear stage one, Raid Team Leader?”
“Hmm. Two hours from now?”
“……”
Everyone fell silent.
“Everyone needs to reach the ten percent pattern alive.”
Of course, there are strategies that don’t require everyone to survive, but it’s too early for those to be revealed.
The first party to clear has already shown the answer, so no one will consider other possibilities.
“So you’re saying even the highest-level players will need two more hours just to reach ten percent safely?”
“Yes.”
“Huh?”
“Is the difference really that big?”
“Ah.”
“Everyone’s standards have gotten high……”
Very high.
The Raid Team Leader sighed.
That’s not easy at all.
‘And how much faster will the three-day estimate become. Ugh, surely the second stage won’t have even more absurd difficulty….’
The Raid Team Leader shelved his worry for now.
The second stage’s gimmick difficulty was far higher compared to the first—his teammates would be the bottleneck, and there was no way to just drag them through by the collar.
‘Or was there…?’

[‘Geomsin1’ has disabled the Red Knight’s Greatsword!]

One way or another, Seo Jun’s party reached the final stage first.

[Geomsin!!! STAGE ONE CLEAR!!!!]
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Other parties, step it up!!!!
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For reference, the second party to clear didn’t appear until two hours and thirty minutes later.
Other teams grew impatient and attempted evasion, resulting in a sudden spike in retries—though whether that had an impact or not, no one would ever know.

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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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