Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 6
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Episode 6
Joseon’s Assassin had been a devoted fan of Assassination of Dawn since its PC days.
When he transitioned to virtual reality, despite receiving criticism that previous works had failed to capture the appeal of VR, he’d sunk thousands of hours into Assassination of Dawn—a testament to his genuine passion.
More than that, virtual reality suited him reasonably well. In short, he had genuine talent.
Of course, he couldn’t fly around like the pros, but within Assassination of Dawn, there weren’t many who played better than him.
He was both a named user of the Assassination of Dawn Community, regularly uploading videos of high-level play, and a beta tester for this new urban-shadow title.
[We intend to focus on genuine infiltration and assassination. One-Against-Many Combat? Try it if you can.]
The developers announced this design philosophy before launch.
When he heard it, he cheered.
After all, he was genuinely committed to One-Against-Many play—he loved the phrase “It’s assassination if there are no witnesses!”
But they were raising the difficulty?
For someone of his skill, it was a fresh challenge. He also appreciated that it wouldn’t be easy gameplay that just anyone could pull off.
And that expectation shattered during beta testing.
The reason was simple: difficulty.
It had been raised far too high.
Various close-combat skills carried over identically from the previous title, but enemy Hit Points and numbers had swelled tremendously.
To overcome this, he needed to exploit the new parrying system that dramatically increased damage, but the parrying difficulty had skyrocketed as well.
Even for someone as skilled and near-pro as him, he’d fail occasionally. Each failure stung deeply in actual gameplay.
And despite the developers’ talk of focusing on assassination, the boss combat difficulty—which showed absurd polish—frustrated him.
He ended up spending the beta period playing assassination-focused rather than One-Against-Many.
Still, he was satisfied enough.
After all, it was lauded as a masterpiece that had opened new horizons for assassination games, earning recognition as “The Breath of the City” for its insane freedom in assassination methods.
But once the beta period ended and the game launched officially, Joseon’s Assassin felt something was missing.
For him, true assassination was One-Against-Many Combat.
So he started watching streams.
He’d played the game plenty anyway, and he’d keep playing going forward.
But.
[You guys, you can actually assassinate by collapsing buildings. Insane]
Here.
[The target really sits on a bench every morning reading the newspaper. Just blow up that box and the assassination succeeds. This crazy masterpiece]
And there.
[Three hours hiding in the shadows now. Still getting stepped on by people in the street. When is this guy coming, seriously!]
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Why are you like that, gather intel please, brother
-That’s what assassination is! Yeah!
-I seriously have no idea why I’ve been watching this for three hours????
No matter where he looked.
He couldn’t find any One-Against-Many play.
So he couldn’t enjoy himself.
During this time when every Assassination of Dawn fan was laughing, reveling, swarming together, drawing aggro left and right!
Just as he was losing enthusiasm and about to close the stream, a recommended broadcast popped up.
He figured it’d be some generic no-name stream, but the title caught his eye.
[First time streaming, first time playing VR games, total newbie. Anyone want to offer tips?]
A newbie entering virtual reality through Assassination of Dawn? Legal backseat gaming?
He couldn’t resist.
The moment he clicked and entered, he immediately saw the Tutorial—
a high-level player perfectly parrying a guard’s sword.
‘Could it be coincidence?’
Even as someone who knew better than anyone that parrying couldn’t happen by chance, he still thought that.
But then the streamer proceeded to dispatch the guard, and out of five soldiers, parried four of them
cleanly.
“Yeah, that’s real assassination!”
Joseon’s Assassin cheered, schooling the viewers who’d been dismissing him.
Though he was quickly silenced.
And after a bit, a line came through the broadcast.
[Everyone, let me show you a 13-Chain Parry.]
“A 13-Chain Parry? Just surviving there is already huge…….”
Joseon’s Assassin swallowed hard, watching the screen with bated breath.
Since the transition to this new title, one-versus-many combat had become especially difficult.
The reason was coordination.
Whether the developers were genuinely adamant about forcing assassination play was unclear, but in this version, if mooks cluster together, they move with brutal efficiency.
Once they secure their positions, their movements are gapless.
But the Abbot gave them time to set their positions. This counted as a newcomer’s
arrogance, fairly speaking.
Yet why did it feel like he’d win?
He switched his viewpoint from first-person to third-person and locked it there.
To better observe what looked like a remarkable play in detail.
[There’s only one enemy! Don’t be afraid!]
Clang!
Metal weapons sounded, and soldiers arranged in a circle advanced on the Abbot in sequence.
Only then did the Abbot start moving his feet.
And a Staff tracing a semicircle.
Crash!
Crash!
Joseon’s Assassin’s eyes widened.
‘How in the world did he parry at that angle? And his account creation date—he’s not even a beta tester.’
It was impossible.
He simply swung the Staff wide, yet nearly simultaneously parried the blade coming from behind and the one flying from the side.
It seemed he’d grasped in that brief moment that once a Parry registered, there was no reactive force, allowing smooth movement!
The Abbot lightly knocked two of them down, then leaned his upper body back and ducked his head, narrowly dodging the blade as it whistled past, weaving through consecutive strikes like walking a tightrope.
Then once more.
Crash!
Crash!
A wide swing took down two more at once.
‘How is he even seeing attacks from behind? Is it a hack?’
Thirteen-to-one became nine-to-one in an instant. Nine-to-one became eight-to-one, then eight-to-one became six-to-one.
-Wait, was the Abbot a pro?
-Seems like even a pro couldn’t pull that off?
-Dude, if you delete an account you have to wait 4 years to make a new one. Who’d give that up? Anyone who’s tried VR once never quits ㅋㅋ He’s a newbie for sure.
The Abbot reduced enemy numbers methodically—evading what could be evaded, parrying what could be parried.
‘Easy to say.’
Joseon’s Assassin thought that if anyone could survive more than a minute in there, they might as well make this their profession.
Yet the Abbot went further, approaching enemies in a Groggy State and cutting their lives short.
The Abbot would somehow end up beside an enemy who’d fallen while evading another’s chain attack—
smoothly, unintentionally. Yet it was clearly deliberate play.
Assassination of Dawn’s all-time GOAT!!!!!!!
-Wow
-Wah aaaa
-Is it okay for my lowly eyes to witness this?
-Abbot using cheats?
-Then what should shock us?
-Do you even get shocked?
-That’s assassination! That’s assassination! That’s assassination! That’s assassination!
-This streamer’s modesty is killing me
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Already hit follow
When Seo Jun checked his follow list, he was briefly startled. All six current viewers had followed him.
You could say it’s only six, but in terms of ratio, it’s 100%.
A small number makes the statistic possible, but it wasn’t a bad sign at all.
“Should we go catch Ethor now?”
-Real ㅋㅋ
Befitting a Mansion, Chandeliers and various luxurious furnishings caught the eye.
After climbing to the second floor and opening the bedroom door at the center, something silvery flashed through the gap.
His pupils dilated for an instant and he immediately threw himself sideways.
Crash!
The prepared Ethor had waited for the moment Seo Jun opened the door, then brought a Flail crashing down.
The iron ball at the Flail’s end split the doorframe and floor.
-I noticed it when he parried earlier but his reaction speed is insane
-Other people at least die once here
His Hit Points dropped slightly.
“Can you parry a Flail too, everyone?”
-Conscience ㅇㄴ?
-If it were possible, someone would’ve cleared the Tutorial
-The devs have common sense. How’d you parry a Flail with a Staff ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
A Flail was a spiked iron sphere head connected to the handle by rope or chain.
In Korea, it had settled on the term Flail for convenience.
Whoosh!
Ethor began swinging the Flail recklessly.
Crash!
Crash!
Seo Jun retreated, and the Flail shattered the innocent railing and walls.
But he didn’t give up.
If it wasn’t designed to be unbeatable, there had to be a way.
He thought about drawing the sword from within the Staff and targeting vital points like Ethor’s eyes.
Then messages flooded in consecutively.
“For now, thanks for the info, Joseon’s Assassin.”
Increased damage ratio?
Let’s test it.
The answer to the enemy’s weapon lay in closing distance instead.
If the enemy exploited their Hit Point advantage in combat, closing distance was almost like walking straight into danger, but this game oddly didn’t include such unrealistic combat mechanics.
It meant soldiers didn’t adopt a strategy of exchanging blows because they had high HP, but instead moved as though one hit meant death.
Sure enough.
Ethor seemed panicked.
Even if his eye got stabbed by the Staff, he wouldn’t die, but he didn’t know that and couldn’t exploit it.
A human would have.
Seo Jun slashed Ethor’s neck as he tried to retrieve the Flail embedded in the floor.
Then he grasped the Flail’s handle together with Ethor and slashed his neck again.
A test of strength had begun.
The dangerous part of the Flail was the spiked head.
But if you grasped the handle together, the force wouldn’t transmit to the head, neutralizing it.
-Really instant
Seo Jun felt that his assigned strength was weaker than Ethor’s.
So he immediately slashed Ethor’s neck once more.
Because he felt the strength fade each time Ethor flinched.
“Take your hands off my weapon! You Assassination of Dawn bastards!”
Ethor tried to kick Seo Jun to separate him, but he felt the leg rising.
Seo Jun immediately blocked it by striking the shin with his Staff before it came up.
Ethor then threw a punch with his opposite hand, and Seo Jun lightly tilted his head to evade.
Scrape.
Once more, the Staff slashed Ethor’s neck.
The Hit Point bar dropped noticeably.
“I think this will do it.”
-Ethor we’re sorry ㅠㅠ
-Is that even possible for a human?
“Dispersing Ethor’s strength, negating every attempt to separate, never getting hit once, and the technique of slashing the neck dozens of times. Seriously insane! Truly the GOAT!”
What was more chilling was that he hadn’t even drawn the sword from the Staff.
Other streamers had tried and failed, using swords embedded in Sword Sticks, assassination blades in Gauntlets, and Wires.
But the Abbot faced Ethor with just the Staff alone.
The Staff had a cutting edge too, but its damage was half compared to the embedded sword and a third compared to the assassination blade.
[It’s over.]
Though Ethor still had one-fifth of his Hit Points remaining, the voice came through the speaker with certainty.
Since damage increased exponentially, the Abbot may have calculated that the next strike would end it.
At that skill level, damage calculation was child’s play…….
[Actually, I need one more hit.]
So it seemed he wasn’t infallible after all. There was a faint sense of bumbling to him.
[Ahem.]
Finally, Hit Points decreased cleanly and a cutscene played.
[Hypocritical hounds of Assassination of Dawn! I will not go alone!]
[Tutorial Quest – Assassination Quest]
[Success]
-This gotta be First Clear right??
-No way ㅋㅋ just accidentally watched a no-name stream and got the First Clear ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-We’re witnessing history right now
Joseon’s Assassin, witnessing the First Clear actually succeed, briefly joined the equally stunned chat, then opened a new browser window.
His destination: the Assassination of Dawn Community.
And he began writing a post alongside the recorded stream footage.
The title first.
[A total newbie who’s streaming and playing VR for the first time does a 13-Chain Parry in the Tutorial while clearing mooks and catches Ethor for the world’s first clear (seriously not fake)]
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————