Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 340

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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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Episode 340

Moving slowly and cautiously through the darkness.
Atrax, a player from the Slayer Hunter Team, who had been assigned to the west entrance.
Nine of them had descended into the basement to mark every entrance, spreading out strategically.
All to hunt down a single person perfectly.
As they expected, the opposing team arrived, and they killed three of their players without difficulty. Truly without difficulty.
All they had to do was wait, spot them as they moved carefully, and shoot.
That’s what Atrax’s teammates did. That was the picture they’d drawn.
‘They said one person came through each gateway? Only the ones positioned near the entrance got their chance. But what was he doing? Wasn’t he also supposed to be just one person?’
Their quarry, stationed even closer to the west entrance than Atrax, yet somehow dead all the same—a teammate left to die alone.
It wasn’t inexplicable.
The opponent had either pulled off something outlandish or shown an opening.
According to their analysis, the opponent should never show an opening.
Seo Jun was someone who could be crushed by talent alone.
They acknowledged Seo Jun.
Perceiving your prey accurately was also an essential virtue.
So Atrax slowly approached the spot where his teammate had fallen, cautious and alert, then stopped at the chokepoint.

[I’ll go faster.]
[Be careful. Don’t show an opening.]
[If you’re flawless, the opponent won’t bother trying anything.]

Right. He was waiting for his teammates’ support.
The more people there were, the fewer openings could be exploited.
They covered for each other. That alone could restrict the opponent’s movements.
It was defense.
‘It really is dark.’
Unlike other games, Last especially emphasized such elements—it incorporated a darkness mechanic like a horror game.
Of course, later on you could craft flashlights.
‘But even then, a flashlight just tells enemies where I am.’
So you had to blend into the darkness.
And in that moment.
‘Huh?’
As he stared silently into the dark space, he had an illusion that the darkness had rippled for an instant.
An illusion?
Or not?
Had the anomaly he’d caught in a blink been perceived because he blinked, or had he missed it because he blinked?
The basement was silent. He couldn’t even hear his teammates approaching quietly.
No, he heard something.
Scrape.
A small signal that someone was moving very close by.
‘No way?’
An opening?
Had he shown an opening?
Hoping it was just his imagination, he turned to look aside, and something hard brushed his head.
Bang!
A crossbow.
The crossbow had fired just in front of his temple, and as his health drained away in one blow, he saw it.
A figure gripping a spear short and ruthlessly dragging it across his body.
A hunter.

* * *

Last’s users hated the Slayer Hunter Team.
Since Last allowed users from across the world to play on any server together, the game itself had a large playerbase.
And precisely because of that, Last’s tournaments ran quite frequently.
In fact, they ran often.
Major corporations opened tournament servers for publicity.
Massive streamers opened tournament servers because they wanted to.
All of it was a festival for Last gamers.
But Hunter Teams never missed those festivals.
Of course, after hunting a few times, organizers started filtering them out little by little, but Last users were fed up with these Hunter Teams that kept reappearing just when you forgot about them.

[Here they come again. Look at them accepting every invite because it’s public broadcast—they don’t know better. Hahaha! This is driving me insane!]

The Hunter Team that unfailingly either took first place or thoroughly disrupted the game.
How would the fact of their appearing again strike the Last users?

[Should we actually bomb their office? I’m seriously considering it.]
[These guys never play our game normally, and haha, now they’re going to do meta analysis again.]
[Is the target that streamer this time?]

It arrived poorly, of course.
But such public sentiment was quickly suppressed.
Because of another team’s emergence.

[The Plunderers—a team of veteran players gathering under that name. Finally! We can finally get revenge!]

Last’s greatest named players had formed a single team.
To defeat the Hunter Teams and dominate Last!
From that point on, Last’s users completely erased the program’s actual protagonist from their minds.
Even if they heard talk of Seo Jun, it was outside their interest.
The Last community was where those obsessed with Last gathered, after all.
Of course, those slightly less obsessed paid attention to what crazy plays Seo Jun might pull off in Last, but once the roster was revealed, most of them—
Focused entirely on the Plunderers.
What kind of performance would the best players show?
And how helplessly would the Hunter Team suffer revenge?
The reason these top-tier players had lost thus far was that they were scattered, while the Hunter Team was unified.
But if they gathered?
Last users had no doubt whatsoever that the Plunderers would win.
And yet.

[What????]
[They’re getting pushed back this badly in the early fight?????]
[Total wipeout?????]
[Lmaooo huh what’s going on??? This is insane lmaooo That’s our Boss!!! What even were the Plunderers lmaooo]

Their hopes were crushed.
From the start.
Not even crushed by the Hunter Team. Just by one strange person.

[Subcontractor??? That Korean just treated our hope like it was absolute nonsense!]
[Even if we get revenge in the late game, there’s no excuse for that early defeat—it’s just a skill gap…]
[How is one person even doing this?]
[Yeah, it’s possible. Want to actually see what the Boss has been doing now?]

And it didn’t even stop there.
Koreans came flooding in, uploading highlight videos and upvoting them relentlessly.
This was of course bad manner behavior and did Seo Jun no favors.
As Seo Jun’s viewership grew, so did the number of low-quality viewers.
From Korea and everywhere else.
There were people using Seo Jun not for his sake but just to stir up flamebait.
The world contained all manner of people.
Such fan behavior and ill will were enough in less than an hour to kindle hostility toward Seo Jun.
Didn’t people say fans create haters, after all?
Karma Stack.
Something Seo Jun normally accumulated skillfully—his viewers were building it up carelessly on his behalf.
But.

[I’m going to be so sick of the Slayer!]

The moment Seo Jun began hunting the Hunter Team in the darkness.

[Hmm……? He’s fighting pretty well.]
[I hope the Slayer loses. Hahaha.]
[If he wins, it’d feel so satisfying! I’m actually starting to like him a little.]

The public sentiment began to show signs of shifting.

* * *

Combat in darkness unfolded with utmost stealth.
Shadows draped across the space became cover; the moment you attacked, sound spread and cover vanished.
Rushing to help would mean missing the predator in hiding, and since shadows didn’t actually stop bullets, hiding was no guarantee of safety.
Rules had to be followed.
Other fights might not be so strict, but this place demanded rules of special rigor.
There, after killing one more person, Seo Jun closed his eyes completely.
Then he switched to Streamer Considerate Setting, so only viewers could hear him and not his teammates, and spoke.
“So it’s seven versus one and there are four left. Want to try this with my eyes closed? What’s that? You’re asking why?”
Well.
“I can see—no, hear it all, obviously?”

-lmaooo yeah sure Boss
-Boss no matter what you say I’m gonna believe you now~
-Nobody even asked what’s up with you anymore lol I’d believe you if you said you were flying through the sky lmaooooo
-What’s up with him anyway nobody’s asking but I still want to type about it lol is this normal?
-Newbie dude you didn’t get enough Korean language education lmao
-fr fr lol

“I was joking. Now let’s resume the hunt.”
He melted back into the darkness.
He’d already swept this area.
From the sounds, four of them were drawing near.
They must have been panicked. They hadn’t expected an easy hunt.
‘Human thought has limits. The limit of never transcending beyond their own experience.’
Seo Jun closed his eyes for a moment, shutting off visual information to maximize auditory processing, then waited briefly.
‘Before they gather.’
He launched his hunt just before the enemies could group up.
The optimal moment.
Bang!
Moving through the darkness, he fired his gun. Distraction. Simultaneously, he threw the rock he’d given them earlier upward, and Seo Jun drove between the four frozen people.
Since he could hear his teammates’ communication too, there was no need for them to speak.
So they wouldn’t be able to tell each other apart.
Crash!
The echo spread through the spot where Seo Jun had just been. The sound of the rock falling.
And in that instant!
Whoosh!
He fired his crossbow and thrust with his spear. In the darkness.
The spot where Seo Jun and his target had been would have shown obvious signs of disturbance, but the other three’s minds were focused elsewhere.
“He’s dead.”
Seo Jun melted back into the darkness.
“That’s Assassination, isn’t it?”
The more extreme the situation, the wider the gap between Seo Jun and ordinary people grew.
Where Seo Jun could display the same peak performance in any terrain, ordinary people could only have their abilities decline in extreme conditions.
In other words, choosing this place as his hunting ground was taking advantage of the limits of experience.

* * *

[Chat keeps mentioning Visualization of Sound! Is this streamer perhaps an ordinary Korean language teacher who found his true calling as a streamer and now plays games like this? What an incredible story!! He looks so young but he was even a teacher—I respect that!]
[The Slayer is getting utterly destroyed way harder than the Plunderers! Hahaha! This feels amazing!]
[Hmm, they’re our enemy anyway, but isn’t everyone having a little too much fun?]

The Slayer’s leader was alone now.
He analyzed the situation coldly from the center of the dark basement.
‘He exploits the areas draped in absolute shadow to their utmost limit, moving freely. He has no constraints while everything constrains us.’
So they failed. No—they were defeated. Hunted.
Was that all?
A human silhouette became visible.
“Take this!”
Whoosh-scream!!
He immediately raised his crossbow and fired, but as if it were a mirage, the arrow only bounced off the wall.
“Why did you scream?”
At the enemy’s voice finally reaching his ears, the leader let out a hollow laugh.
“That was your last arrow.”
He wanted to rush outside and see what had happened, how he’d moved.
If only there wasn’t a two-hour disconnection penalty.
‘Dying now is huge. I’m going to have to grind my ass off today to make up for this.’
“I see. Then.”
At some point, the voice he’d been hearing from far away drew closer.
How hadn’t he heard the footsteps?
“Here you go.”
A hand suddenly jutted out from the darkness.
It held an arrow.
Then the hand opened wide and retreated back into the darkness, and the arrow fell to the ground.
“……?”
“Fighting.”
“……?”
And from this point on.
Last users’ affection for Seo Jun began skyrocketing.

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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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