Chapter 22
The moment he stepped past the boundary, he could tell something had changed.
And as if they had been waiting for it, the guard stars rushed at him.
Seo Jun reflexively tried to draw his sword from the inventory with his right hand.
But his left hand fumbled through empty air.
"Guess you don't get used to it from the start."
-Please dodge?
-No way he's clearing the Tower of Annihilation like this.
-If you suddenly become left-handed, what can you even do?
Seo Jun awkwardly staggered backward with clumsy movements and barely managed to draw his sword with his right hand.
Then he swung it.
Kaaamaaaal!
-LOL
-What? Why⦠a parry?
-His senses changed and he still pulls that off? =
Seo Jun smiled and swung his arm once more.
Kamaaaam!
"Yep, I've got the hang of it."
Seo Jun adapted to the altered senses incredibly quickly.
For Seo Jun, who could control his body down to the millimeter, it only took a little conscious adjustment.
His reaction speed had slowed down, though.
But that kind of gap would only become a fatal weakness against true masters. Against NPCs, it was negligible.
"Man, this game is easy."
Seo Jun placed his sword against the incoming fireball as casually as someone writing with their non-dominant hand.
Awkward, but the result was perfect.
-EnEC
-Seriously, what can't this streamer do?
-His broadcasting setup.
kkkkkkkk
"Honestly, I've never seen a game easier than this. You just go over there and fight."
There's always a solution somehow.
Seo Jun slowly walked forward step by step, dealing with the mages.
Slash!
-Is this what they mean by 'when your combo's good, life gets easier' or whatever?
-I'm seriously jealous of his mechanics.
-Is there even a game this guy hasn't mastered? Stop flexing already!
After that, Seo Jun completely adapted and just kept repeating what he had been doing on the 4th floor.
Throwing nearby trash mobs into the line of sight of casting mages.
Smashing the books of chanting mages so they couldn't complete their spells.
Why are you bullying them so much?
: We'll pretend we didn't see anything, so please just move on!
-This bastard lololol
Of course, there was a reason Seo Jun kept bullying them.
He was testing whether anything changed depending on the reaction speed.
To be honest, Seo Jun's combat skill level was so high that games rarely gave him any challenge.
If his opponent were human, there would at least be the fun of teaching them something, but Dawn of the Extermination Squad wasn't a PvP-focused game.
After all, this game wasn't built solely around combat.
The fine details.
The open world.
Seo Jun enjoyed things like that.
Finding the "flow" was the same.
"Well, unfortunately, I already found the stairs to the 6th floor. Let's head up immediately."
After looking around the 5th floor, it felt like he had already seen every type of magic that could appear there.
Sure, it would be better to search thoroughly, but when had he ever obsessed over missing one or two spells?
It wasn't like he'd never find them again.
-What exactly is unfortunate here?
-The remaining mages are practically kneeling and begging him to leave.
-The fact he's genuinely disappointed is insane lololol
As Seo Jun left the 5th floor and climbed the stairs, his senses returned to normal.
"So that's how it works."
Seo Jun repeatedly clenched and unclenched his right hand while adapting to the restored sensations as he climbed.
The debuff on the next floor was Slowness.
A debuff that made the body sluggish.
The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, it felt as though steel bars had been strapped to his body.
It felt like gravity had suddenly doubled.
Fatigue spread through his entire body.
Compared to the confusion debuff on the 5th floor, most people considered this one far easier.
But Seo Jun thought that, at least for direct combat instead of stealth, this slowness was just as troublesome as confusion.
"Oh. This is pretty annoying."
Seo Jun began moving while predicting the enemy's attacks in advance.
Otherwise, he judged that dodging after the fact would get him hit.
Kukukukung.
Rocks burst upward from the ground.
Sharp stone spikes rapidly lunged toward Seo Jun.
And Seo Jun's sword collided precisely with the tip of the incoming rock.
Magic split apart along its flow.
Seo Jun shattered the spell and killed the mage guarding the area.
Afterward, he quickly found the stairs leading to the 7th floor.
-Wow. Even I feel slowed down just watching this. =γ =
-It was funny when stealth classes got slowed, but watching a martial class get slowed is just frustrating.
-Hurry up and clear the floor.
"Alright, reflecting everyone's opinions, I'll speedrun the 6th floor."
If there had been a hidden reward, he might have explored more leisurely, but Seo Jun didn't care much.
Instead, while climbing the stairs, he found himself thinking about something else.
"If all the environmental conditions this game creates were real life, it would've been great training."
Couldn't the reason virtual reality users had become so skilled over the past ten years be because they could safely accumulate combat experience in so many different environments without fearing death?
Back in real life, people with overwhelmingly high skill levels gained through over ten years of training were active as professionals, so the thought naturally crossed his mind.
And the lowered barrier of access to martial arts probably played a role too.
Unlike the past, where martial arts belonged only to a select few, now anyone could walk into a martial arts hall and learn easily.
"We're already on the 7th floor."
The debuff here was Darkness.
Complete loss of vision.
Seo Jun flung the door wide open.
And directly across from him, he could see the stairs leading to the 8th floor.
"Oh, looks like we don't even need to search the 7th floor."
Maybe the developers decided that finding the next staircase in total darkness would be impossible.
Even so, it wasn't easy.
Two mage NPCs stood in the middle of the long hallway.
Just like before, they had been waiting for Seo Jun to open the door.
-Is he dying here?
-Honestly, Darkness is way too unfair.
-You can't see anything. What's he supposed to do?
-Just climb the outer wall at this point.
-Not even a real human could clear this lol
Seo Jun watched the chat window explode with reactions, then smiled and stepped forward.
Recalling every sensation he had gathered from the previous floors.
In an instant, the screen was replaced by a space filled with nothing but darkness.
The only thing visible was Seo Jun's own body.
Huuuβ
In that silent world where even the smallest sound echoed loudly.
Fwoosh.
He heard the sound of a fireball forming.
Seo Jun recalled the structure of the hallway and slowly began walking forward.
Whooshβ
Seo Jun tilted his head to the left, and something brushed past where his head had been.
He felt the heat.
And a second later, the lingering traces of red mana drew a faint line through the darkness, revealing the path the spell had taken.
"A visual effect, huh. They made it pretty immersive."
Kukukukβ
Still turning his body, Seo Jun sliced apart the stone spike bursting from the wall by driving his sword straight into it.
Gray glowing fragments scattered through the dark space.
Sasasasak.
He threw himself backward to dodge the creatures crawling across the floor.
Fwoosh!
He destroyed it.
This time there were two.
Seo Jun rolled forward, naturally rising back to his feet. He slightly tilted his body to dodge one spell and cut apart the other with his sword.
Pajijik!
Red sparks burst out.
Jejejeong!
Right in front of him, he heard the sound of an ice spell forming.
Seo Jun immediately swung his sword upward from below toward the bodies of the uncompleted ice arrows.
And after hearing the mage stagger backward from the destroyed spell, he slammed his sword downward just beside the empty space where the blue glow descended.
Then he immediately started running.
"Wind? Ice? Or both?"
The mage he had just killed had only created ice arrows.
But the mage waiting near the stairs had cast ice arrows simultaneously too.
The problem was that the sounds overlapped, making it hard for Seo Jun to distinguish them properly.
Seo Jun rushed forward as fast as possible, trying to eliminate them before the magic fully formed.
But he was too late.
Whoooooosh.
He felt the faint movement of air spiraling inward like a vortex.
That was the sign the spell had completed.
Still, it was fine. As long as he could feel the wind.
Piyuuuuung!
"Thankfully, it's within range. Three shots."
Seo Jun twisted diagonally through the air and slashed downward.
Two icy projectiles passed through the spots where his head and legs had been, followed by a freezing gust of wind.
"I got them all."
And the arrow aimed straight for his heart struck Seo Jun's sword and fell to the floor.
He had identified the arrows' positions purely through the movement of the wind.
Once again, he leisurely wandered through the darkness.
Jeobeo, jeobeo.
In the silent darkness, only his footsteps echoed.
"Assassins are supposed to shine more in the dark."
-Hey. This isn't darkness, this is straight-up blindness.
-The flow lolololol
-Assassin? No. Darkness? Also no.
-Holy Roman Empire meta lolol
-Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire β just that guy.
Fwooorl.
Another spell began casting right beside Seo Jun.
Seo Jun grabbed the mage's arm.
"F-fr-freeze!"
The cast naturally got canceled.
-Humans really did exist, and he's currently streaming on Travel.
-: You can no longer deceive me.
-Breaking News) Seo Jun has never once been fooled by Night Vision.
Seo Jun dealt with the mage just like that, then stepped onto the stairs and looked back.
The darkness parted around Seo Jun like a whirlpool.
And the hallway he had passed through became visible.
"Wow. Good thing I dodged all that."
Those glowing fragments he'd seen in the darkness really had all been remnants of magic.
-Did I just watch a circus performance or a game?
-This is insane, seriously.
-Those were ALL spells he actually dodged? lol I'm laughing because this makes no sense.
The chat exploded with reactions.
And donation messages began piling up instantly.
Originally, he had disabled donations during gameplay so they wouldn't interrupt him, but since this was a brief break, it was probably fine.
['a o' donated 10,000 won!]
[That was awesome.]
['ShiPil' donated 10,000 won!]
[Holy shit!]
['I can't believe I saw this live' donated 10,000 won!]
[He's a monster.]
['Room Corner K Director' donated 10,000 won!]
[Why are you filming an action movie by yourself?]
"Thanks for all the donations, everyone."
Seo Jun sat down on the stairs for a moment.
"But honestly, this level is just⦠what was it again? Sound play? If you know how to do that, everyone can do this, right? Don't you guys all do it too?"
The chat immediately erupted.
-Here he goes again;
-Honestly, if you're this good you're allowed to brag, but I still wanna punch you.
-The moment he makes one mistake everyone's gonna jump him lolol
-How is this 'sound play'? This is literally superpowers lololol
-I seeβ¦ I just couldn't use sound properlyβ¦
"Sound play" referred to gameplay that relied on listening carefully and using sound cues to tactically determine enemy positions and information.
But what Seo Jun showed looked completely different to the viewers.
It was almost likeβ
['So this is what it is' donated 100,000 won!]
[Is this that thing where hearing becomes vision? I'm a national-level Grade 9 athlete and now I totally understand.]
-The analogy is insane lololol
-No matter how you look at it, the donor is definitely a teacher lol
-That synesthetic expression was crazy lol
kkkkkkkk
-Mom! I'm studying! Mom! I'm studying! Mom! I'm studying! Mom! I'm studying!
Even Seo Jun couldn't hold back his laughter.
As expectedβ¦
Streaming was fun.