Mysterious Assassin Master
I immediately dashed down the path into the cave and joined them there.
Seji knew Ruru's strengths better than anyone else. She had clearly seen the potential in this growth timed just right.
Ruru's biggest advantage.
The unblockable, terrifying over-damage based on the maximum health damage from **Ruru-style Severed Blood Vessel** that triggered when the ten pressure point stacks were filled.
If the ten stacks were gathered, any normal dealer or bruiser would be one-shot with near certainty.
Even heavily tanked paladins would reach death's door with the absurdly strong moment damage.
...The real problem was that Ruru would probably die before the stacks could even be gathered.
And because she possessed that over-damage, the rest of her skills felt underwhelming.
Without gathering the ten stacks, her basic pressure-point damage was slashed to a fifth, and her basic attack damage was only a third of what other characters had.
And the most important of all—the abysmal difficulty parry.
Thanks to those weaknesses, Ruru was overlooked despite the strong over-damage.
But if the opponent was an epic monster, things were different.
Straightforward patterns. Straightforward movement.
And thanks to her enormous health, the maximum health-proportional damage of the Severed Blood Vessel that achieved maximum efficiency.
Of course, the damage from one hit was absurdly strong... but that was irrelevant if you dodged it.
For that reason, Ruru could now attempt to tackle the uncatchable Valorr at exactly this timing.
This was how dungeon runners used the same-team Ruru.
As we entered the dungeon, the surrounding music sank heavily and crushed our nerves.
A sun rising over the dark cathedral to herald the morning slowly brightened the interior beyond the arched stone windows.
**BANG!**
The rough sound of a giant axe handle slamming down onto the floor.
The interior grew brighter and brighter until it finally illuminated the throne above.
A silhouette of someone seated on a gorgeously decorated, enormous stone throne.
An old blindfold covering the left side of her face. Silver-white hair. A heavy armor covered in scars from war.
**[Pommor’s King - Valorr]**
He slowly rose from his seat. His massive body was fully revealed.
**BOOM!**
He slammed the giant axe handle into the floor once more.
**TATATAT—**
At the same time, I sprinted inward.
Valorr lifted the axe and swung it wildly through the air.
The floor right where I had been moments ago was shattered into pieces by a fierce sword slash.
Same-team assassin Seji immediately used stealth to wait for my opening.
‘Well played. Even if you were a plain dick, or even a master dick, you would have been bashed in right away.’
Normally this was a minimum-four-player epic dungeon. Assassins who had never practiced two-person synergy with Ruru usually rushed in without a thought, allowed Valorr to land a hit, and were instantly one-shot.
The reason was simple.
Valorr had a mechanism that was not well known to opponents.
The first pattern of the cycle changed depending on the number of opponents.
With two people like now, Valorr’s first attack would target the enemy with the lowest basic attack power in sight. Proof of this was that the attack had just fallen behind my back.
Ruru had the lowest basic attack power. At the same time, Seji had the highest basic attack power among close-range characters.
Therefore, the first attack naturally targeted me.
The next attack would then target the highest attack power target.
A downward slam with a wide left and right area.
And it was almost without any wind-up.
If you were unprepared, you could not block it.
And with a damage output this early and powerful from a Valorr who had not properly equipped defensive items, even just grazing you would guarantee death.
These days, attempting Valorr with two people was practically impossible, so this pattern was effectively deleted.
Only Ruru could attempt it. And Ruru herself was a rare species at the brink of extinction.
Back when Ruru was OP, this pattern appeared often. But that was already two years ago—a time now forgotten in the public’s memory.
Even if Ruru was on the team and knew the pattern, the majority of cases where she was killed were when she failed to notice that it was definitively targeting her and failed to react.
Even with knowledge of that special mechanism, there were many cases where she alone tested her reaction speed with short evasion windows and got devoured.
Seji knew all of this perfectly. She also knew it was nearly impossible to evade the second pattern as a close-range assassin with severe movement restrictions.
But if she used stealth? Assassins had no risk whatsoever. She could just dump all the burden on Ruru.
What if Ruru died? With stealth active, the battle would end and they could exit the dungeon. Either way, using stealth was the wise choice.
...Hmm, this would need its own separate guide later. Nice. I was already thinking which of the six guides I should write, and this one will fill it.
‘Still, why is it in Master? Did you have a lot of backstory too?’
A range for the giant downward slam appeared on the floor.
Feeling an inexplicable sense of déjà vu, I counted inside my head.
...One. ...Two.
Normally, I should have used Ruru’s fast basic evasion skill to escape the range of the slam...
**WHOOSH**
**TING!**
I chose to parry.
An almost invisible downward slam speed. It felt like challenging the limits of a human.
But the attack was perfectly blocked. With my old body I probably could not have done it, but this new body could block even while looking at it. If I knew the timing, it was ridiculously simple.
The parry was successful. Valorr’s forced pattern broke and she entered a brief stun.
At the same time, Seji threw a rope dart straight at Valorr.
The moment the rope hit Valorr’s waist, she yanked it taut and closed the distance in an instant.
I drew Valorr’s aggro and continued the parries.
**WHOOSH. TING!**
**WHIRRIRIK. TING! TING! TING!**
**WHOOSH. TING!**
And the skill activated—
**[Insolence]**
A rapidly flying giant axe blade.
**TING!**
**WHOOSH! PSHUK!**
**WHOOSH! TING! TING! PSHUK!**
By reading the timing, I landed two successful thrusts.
Ten pressure point stacks engraved on Valorr’s body.
At the same time, Ruru grabbed the spear and pulled it back hard, gathering a full tank of spirit.
Skill.
**Annihilation Spear**
—**HYAAAAAAT!**
Ruru shouted as the spirit-charged spear thrust forward.
And the **Ruru-style Severed Blood Vessel** exploded into 10 stacks.
**PABABABABAK!!!**
In a single blow, Valorr was sent flying backward—her enormous health bar nearly one-third was shaved off in chunks.
At the same time, Seji kept accumulating damage without missing a single beat.
I moved the spear again and struck.
Anyone watching would have been amazed at this control—only a few seconds for the ten pressure point stacks to rebuild.
And soon—
**{【Pommor’s King - Valorr】 has been defeated! }**
The question marks rose one after another in the opponent team’s chat.
**{Valorr’s Rage engulfs the entire area! }**
As we took the exiting teleport and stepped outside, countless meteors were already raining down on the enemy team.
Neutral monsters that dungeon runners or supporters should have been leveling up, towers, blessings’ feathers, or guards protecting the fortress—everything fell to the barrage of falling bombs.
Conversely, our team camp was helped by countless prisoners freed by Valorr’s death in our advance.
A powerful buff called **[Valorr’s Heart]** surrounded us.
At the same time, the enemy declared surrender.
Yeah. Capturing Valorr at this timing, of course you surrender.
It felt a bit early to end it, but it did not matter.
“...Heh.”
There was still a second match left.
ChurumukIsLove: hey ChurumukIsLove: hey ruru ChurumukIsLove: accept friend request 10gamer ChurumukIsLove: hey MiChae: sigh MiChae has left the lobby.
FurballSlayer: master ChurumukIsLove: what FurballSlayer: qwer1234 qwer1234 FurballSlayer: I’ll sell this room FurballSlayer: 1v1 come in FurballSlayer has left the lobby.
ChurumukIsLove: haha lol ChurumukIsLove has left the lobby.
---------
**[SejiSeji’s Game Settlement Window]**
SejiSeji smiled as if she could not believe it.
“Iya, I kept calling Ruru-nim a name from the beginning, so I wanted to say something at the end, but Ruru-nim has such a strong personality. There, 1v1, puhuhu. I thought it was a quiet, perfect gentleman, but it’s a complete ladies’ man!”
Ha Yunseo had no idea.
“…Fur... ball, Slayer. The nickname is... ahem. It is kind of that, yeah. But wow, that person really plays Ruru well, right? I saw her two-hit parry on Valorr? Damn, seriously. That was an instant attack with no wind-up visible at all. Normally you would have to evade it. Wow, I want to play Ruru like that too. Do you not take disciples? Ah, I want to play Ruru even more now. Should I declare the 50 millionth Ruru master challenge again?”
The fact that 9,500 people were watching this match live.
“...Eh? ...Ah. That person is... famous, right?”
And.
“Here... you’re doing 1v1 too... What does that mean? Can you explain?”
That assassin—Seji—had been the previous season’s Grand Master.
The large influencer and streamer SejiSeji.
“.........Eh? N... Nudist... Doogeja...?"
***