Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 275

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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 275

Dae-su Forest.
If Atura was the contested battlefield between two warring nations, then Dae-su Forest is wilderness itself—where everything hunts and is hunted in turn.
There’s a saying that no creature in Pangea, no matter how mighty, can be the absolute apex predator within these bounds.
For in the shadows of dense trees, any number of lethal entities might be lurking.
Even heroes are no exception.
Spider swarms.
Predators of the wild.
Toward the continental mountains, massive locusts stake their territory.
And hunters no less deadly than the desert trackers roam here.
Their defining trait: all are masters of the hunt.
What happens when the greatest hunters begin hunting one another?
That’s simply what Dae-su Forest is.
“Ah! Just one minute after First Blood—a Second Kill has erupted! The location is Dae-su Forest!”
Bang Ju shifted the broadcast camera briefly.
Though his plan was to focus mainly on Seo Jun, he couldn’t watch only Seo Jun.
The fight had already ended, so when an event like this breaks, he had to spare a glance.
What the viewers primarily wanted was to see someone, yet grasp the gist of what happened from a single feed.

[Lucky to spot them quickly, but… wasn’t I the first? Atura, was it?]

Heroes in Dae-su Forest grow stronger the more they hunt.
Trees, ants, spiders, mantises, birds, snakes, predators, predators, predators.
They hunt the predators.
And the apex of those predators is another hero.
He’d hoped to claim the First Kill bonus by hunting another hero quickly, but a hint of regret came through.
The one who succeeded in the hunt was Baek Do-yul.
The one who fell was an ordinary streamer.
“Ah… if you watch the fight footage, it was overwhelmingly one-sided. Even the first group to be eliminated got it rough—can ordinary amateur streamers really do nothing but suffer when faced with a monster like a pro?”

-ㅠㅠㅠ
-But Seo Jun isn’t a pro, right?
-Baek Do-yul is definitely a monster even among pros
-The Abbot is an even bigger monster!
-Jeom-ma is pretty good too

“Ah, you say our Kael is no pro? That’s true enough. But still, I have to say I’m grateful that Seo Jun wasn’t born in Dae-su Forest. The ecosystem would collapse, wouldn’t it?”

-ㄹㅇㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-We have pretty solid faith in the Abbot
-The broadcast is set up so that nobody enters unless they’re the Abbot anyway
-The Abbot legally skimming honey off the broadcast with permission from the Abbot himself. Respect.
-But the viewer count is 130,000?

Bang Ju turned the camera back to Seo Jun, trying to suppress the smile creeping across his face.
The viewer count had surpassed 100,000 again.
The start could be called a successful strategy.
If now Seo Jun would just keep putting on a show like this!
When Bang Ju glanced away for a moment and looked back, what he saw was Seo Jun standing silently with head bowed, gripping the sword he’d driven into the earth beside the corpse.
“Pfft.”
In crude terms, it was a sight to behold.
In theory the opponent was retired, not actually dead, but still.

-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㅈㄴ faking piety ㅅㅍㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-This bastard’s starting to enjoy it. Stop him!
-Back when he was Heavenly Demon too, once he started enjoying it, both the Orthofaction and Heterodox Sect got wrecked ㅋㅋ

The moment of silence—whether prayer or meditation—stretched on quite long.
Then Seo Jun lifted his head.

[Heretics are to be purged. That is all. There is no mercy.]

-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ keeps being pious ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-His acting is so damn entertaining ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-So how’d he know about the betrayal?
-Show evidence of heresy!

“Seo Jun attacked Dennis first, but perhaps he sensed something strange? He’s someone who has an uncanny knack for feeling out danger in any situation, after all.”

-This seems plausible
-What are you saying ㅋㅋㅋ he just didn’t like the guy and killed him
-Did kill him cause he didn’t like him? Given his personality, it’s totally possible
-Wait…… then from now on he’s just gonna kill everyone and accuse them of heresy???ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-LOL ㅋㅋㅋ I’m sure he has his reasons!

People dreaded the return of a medieval heresy inquisitor.
Those barbaric acts: toss someone into a fire, and if they survive, they’re a witch; if they perish, they’re human.
But what if the one doing it didn’t care—didn’t even need them to fail—to call them a witch simply because they displeased him?
What if he savored the act?
“Is the reason Pangea falls… Kael? Who could possibly stop him?”
Bang Ju muttered as though struck with revelation.
Gasps flooded the chat.

-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Kael seems like a hero who’d never be the cause of doom ㅋㅋㅋ
-You’re a heretic. You’re executed ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Bang Ju’s viewers laughed again and resumed their play.
Perhaps, perhaps—yet it was thoroughly unsettling in every way.

* * *

Of course, Seo Jun was no psychopath who suddenly attacked allies because he felt like it.
He had simply felt it as he walked.
The way Dennis kept hesitating in brief pauses whenever he moved ahead.
Excessive tension coursing through his body.
For this reason, when Seo Jun tested him with a sword strike, Dennis reacted properly—wary and defensive.
Seo Jun well understood that Dennis might walk straight into a prepared ambush.
He had a good read on Dennis as a hero.
Dennis wasn’t the type who grew stronger by successfully pushing back Atura’s frontlines and earning Achievement Points; he was a hero who simply grew stronger by defeating more enemies.
In other words, Seo Jun’s help wasn’t particularly necessary.
Dennis was a rival.
‘Probably.’
Everyone in the Historical Records was a potential rival.
Whether those of the same faction would be allies or not was uncertain.
The odds were low.
They were scattered across the entire realm.
Rather, this iteration of the Historical Records was likely
‘Either all on the same side or every man for himself.’
One of the two.
That’s what Seo Jun’s instinct was telling him.
In any case, these explanations might not convince the audience of his attack on Dennis.
‘They might complain about why I did it in Germany.’
Seo Jun didn’t know that Dennis had conspired with others right at the start of the Historical Records, in plain sight of everyone.
So he thought people might see him as having attacked without reason.
That’s when the idea came to him: become a heresy inquisitor.
It seemed more entertaining than explaining evidence of heresy in tedious detail.
‘Why not just live like this?’
It might be convenient.
Even as viewers would surely protest vehemently if they knew, Seo Jun had reached the front lines.
The enemy hero was nowhere to be seen.
The battlefield had an unusual shape.
Rather than a massive clash of armies, squads of around ten soldiers each were engaged in scattered skirmishes.
But on battlefields like this, one must beware of attacks that surface without warning.
Just as Seo Jun was about to enter.
“No sign of the enemy hero.”
Whatever they were doing, if that was the case—
“Fifty points are mine for the taking.”
Seo Jun dove into the ranks of soldiers.

* * *

[Conflict Zone Support]
—
Support for Atura, the conflict zone with Daran.
Maximum support requested.
Objective: Push the front lines back 50 meters or more.
Reward: Achievement Points +50
—

[You have completed the task and earned Achievement Points +50.]

Returning to the Capital and completing the task, Seo Jun received 50 Achievement Points, bringing his total to 80, and spoke again to Ian.
“Listen, hand over something else. Quickly.”
He likely possessed the most Achievement Points of any hero right now.
He’d been undertaking missions to face other heroes.
If a Dae-su Forest hero had directly hunted another hero, their Achievement Points would be higher, but Seo Jun had achieved the first victory.
Therefore, it was clear he held the lead.
But competitors would catch up soon. They were all experts.
Ian shook his head.
“You should rest now. You’ve worked hard.”
He’d expected as much.
These tasks could only be done once per day.
So four hours had to pass—one day in-game—before he could accept another.
The next task would likely be the second version of Conflict Zone Support.
The objective would be 80 meters or more, not 50. Starting fresh again.
“Hand it over. Now.”
“I’m afraid not. You must rest. As a servant of the God of Light, I cannot permit it.”
“What’s the connection?”
“Both you and I are equal before that deity we serve. I cannot ask you to overexert yourself…”
“What if Asherius faced imminent collapse? Would you still refuse?”
“That would be…”
“See? Hand it over. Now.”
“I cannot. Go rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Seo Jun was expelled.
When Ian shoved him, he found he couldn’t resist—as though his body had become a superconductor offering no friction.
Cast out by the Eviction, Seo Jun checked the remaining time.
‘Two hours. It’s not like I have nothing to do…’
Normally, pushing the front lines in Atura was a task that would take longer.
The rewards reflected that.
The only reason it finished early was that Daran’s hero hadn’t appeared.
From tomorrow onward, the AI would adjust—the objectives would already be higher, and enemies would also send more heroes to stop him.
‘That figures.’
Couldn’t he just flee to another quest?
‘If I flee, I won’t earn many points.’
It feels like I’m being herded along deliberately.
‘If I don’t earn many points, I’ll be slow to understand what the major event of this Historical Records is.’
That’s what life feels like, honestly.
Seo Jun’s eyes gleamed as he left the Building and descended into the city to find another way to gain points.
And as he walked, he murmured to himself:
“Hunt more heretics.”
This concept.
It might actually be fun.
“Pickpockets? Definitely heretics.”

* * *

Daran had a total of five heroes.
Against Asherius’s three, they had two more.
They discovered that by handling matters related to their respective houses and gathering Achievement Points, they could raise their specs through family records or find clues.
Four were nobles.
One belonged to the Guild.
Daran’s nobles had privileges.
If they visited the parliament every evening, they could learn in advance what National Quest would appear the next day.
Actually, that much is predictable, so it’s not much of a privilege.
Their true privilege was knowing the detailed contents in full, and if they could persuade NPCs, they could even modify the quest parameters themselves.
National Quests issued by the system—not family-specific ones—were naturally available to them as well.
“So why did Atura collapse?”
One of Daran’s participants asked the one who’d started in Atura.
“Didn’t think we could win, so we bailed and did a different quest. That German streamer Dennis probably died too.”
“And the result?”
“This quest we’re on now.”

[Counteroffensive]
—
Atura’s front lines have suffered significant setbacks.
After deploying additional forces and successfully recovering thanks to the absence of Asherius’s war enthusiast,
A counteroffensive is needed.
Objective: Push the front lines back 50 meters or more. Or: Eliminate Kael.
Reward: Achievement Points +90
—

“It’s getting toward evening now.”
“That it is.”
“We’ll reclaim what we lost during the night.”
“What if the enemy blocks us?”
“What’s the use? It won’t award points. Or do they really plan to breach Atura and occupy Daran?”
It was impossible.
They could harass Daran’s heroes, but that was all.
When a faction faced crisis, the rewards plummeted sharply.
“Still, I was surprised the Judgment Sword just dropped like that.”
“Hah. Anyway, 80 Achievement Points is quite tempting, right? You think Kael will come back to Atura tomorrow?”
“The AI will force him to. We don’t have much freedom right now.”
“It feels like they’re instigating conflict from the very start… is this a trap of some kind?”
“What matters is the 90 Achievement Points, really.”
“Then our goal later is just to push the front lines, right? Don’t get cocky and die.”
“With that as our target, we’ll succeed and have points to spare.”
“While the other side fails.”
Notably, these two had visited parliament early despite the early stage to check the next National Quest, and they were pro gamers.
Their conversation—an announcement of Seo Jun’s first proper face-off with a pro—became a trending topic in real time.
For various reasons.

—————
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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