Second Playthrough (1)
Second Playthrough (1)
[ HP reached 0. ]
[ The Player dies. ]
[ Bad End 4 — Death at the ｢Demon Realm's Deepest Core｣. ]
[ Calculating data. ]
[ Iteration: 2nd Iteration ]
[ Selected Setting: Combat Aptitude ]
[ System Title: Struggle-Seeking Asura ]
[ Cause of Death: 2nd-Rank Alpha Monster 'Kae'ropt' ]
"Gyaaaak...!"
I absolutely refused to accept reality.
My hands and feet trembled. My vision shook with them, blurring the text on the monitor.
I flailed my arms, then grabbed my head—there was no other outlet for this feeling.
"Agh, that hurts..."
I let go immediately. Must've gripped too hard; tears sprang to my eyes. I rubbed my scalp with my palms and stared at the monitor.
The screen still showed nothing but the obituary for the 2nd Iteration.
I pouted for no reason.
Savior's 2nd Iteration.
A playthrough I built using the mistakes and experience from the 1st Iteration.
The vanilla-spirited 1st Iteration had gone to absolute shit, so for the 2nd Iteration I went straight into character creation and set the Unique Ability.
Unique Ability ‟Combat Aptitude"
Category: Technique Category.
Effect: a boost and correction to learning ability related to combat actions.
Pretty simple, which made it easy to use.
Basically, I just had to grind like hell.
Use a sword, and your swordsmanship improves; proficiency with other weapon arts rises alongside it.
Since it was a skill predicated on combat, your overall battle prowess rose with it.
In short, Combat Aptitude was a Unique Ability purely designed for combat.
Thanks to that, unlike the 1st Iteration, I could actually contribute something meaningful early on.
Of course, I still got absolutely wrecked in the first-semester Tower entry.
What the hell was wrong with Hong Yeon-hwa, tormenting the player like that? I couldn't fathom why she was so desperate to bully a player who was just minding their own business.
And Baek A-rin? She was the complete opposite.
Even when my reputation was terrible, she approached me first and acted friendly. Whenever I needed help, she readily lent a hand. Even when my mental state was a mess during the 1st Iteration, she stuck by me and comforted me—a genuinely kind person.
On top of that, her abilities were outstanding in practically every area. I lost count of how much help she gave me back then. The illustrations were super pretty, too.
Sure, Hong Yeon-hwa also helped me out when we worked together in the 1st Iteration, but...
"Sigh... *koff*, *cough*!"
My thoughts had wandered off track. I hacked out a few coughs.
Then I shook my head and moved the mouse.
'So the 2nd Iteration is a failure, too...'
In the end, the 2nd Iteration also ended in death.
The shocking part was that this build, which was overwhelmingly stronger than the 1st Iteration, died without ever even laying eyes on a Tower Master.
Cause of death: killed after being surrounded by a 2nd-Rank Alpha Monster and its horde, taking a beating for several days...
'Ah, hell.'
The 2nd-Rank Alpha Monster was definitely strong. The matchup was also poor, so my attacks didn't land cleanly, but it wasn't so extreme that it should've killed me this easily.
But the weakness was glaring, and it all went to shit.
'I focused too much on anti-personnel combat.'
The Myriad Combat Arts—what Combat Aptitude evolved into. And from that, over a hundred Technique Category expansion abilities branched off.
Against people, I was overwhelming. Even bastards walking around with the top-grade hero label, I could one-shot them.
But I had no aptitude against giant monsters or armies. I also lacked firepower, making it hard to break through large monsters and their hordes effectively.
In other words, the limits were clear.
More than anything, I'd focused my growth too much on techniques and barely raised my own base specs at all.
Ultimately, the 2nd Iteration was a failure with distinct limitations.
Not that it was a worthless playthrough. The data from the 2nd Iteration would be inherited by the 3rd Iteration.
"Tch tch."
I was thirsty. I'd grab something to drink, then come back and map out the 3rd Iteration build.
Clicking my tongue, I worked the stick attached to my wheelchair's armrest.
.
.
.
Memories of the past flashed by like a panorama.
A memory of clicking my tongue over the 2nd Iteration, calling it a playthrough with painfully clear limitations.
I'd been in a pretty unstable place back then.
Lost one leg, had reporters and god-knows-who showing up at my goshiwon to harass me, moved somehow, but still couldn't do much.
And while adrift like that, I'd reached for a game called Savior like a man possessed.
It fit my tastes well enough that I threw myself into it, trying to forget everything else.
- *Krrrk...*
And now, the 2nd Iteration had just nearly taken my head off in one blow.
The searing heat on the back of my neck snapped my fading mind back.
And the first thing that registered was... pain in the back of my neck.
'How am I feeling pain...'
The Tower of Growth restricts pain. Get stabbed by a sword or sliced open, and it's nothing more than a mild sting.
This wasn't that.
The chill intent that sliced through skin and muscle and crept into my cervical vertebrae.
The searing agony radiating from the severed cross section...
All of it was identical to reality.
The memory from just before came rushing back.
My Innate Talent expanding like an explosion. Simultaneously, observing my own image with my head severed.
A white slash hurtling in at extreme speed.
An instant before it landed, I twisted my body and neck by a hair, and the slash grazed my neck.
The result was a half-severed, dangling neck.
So cleanly cut it was almost admirable—and then blood gushed from the wound.
*Shwaaaak!* A huge torrent of bright-red blood splattered across the barren ground. The earth was so dry it greedily sucked up even the blood.
- *Krrrrrk...!*
Bloody foam bubbled at my lips. Grimacing, I wrapped the Sky Wing Feather around my neck.
I did whatever I could to hold the cross section together, used Homogenization to imitate Ellia's ‟Healing Melody," and applied emergency measures.
A cluster of pure white light settled on my neck. Without any consideration for the future, I recklessly ramped up regenerative power.
'You, insane...!'
If I'd moved a fraction slower, if the barrier I'd set up hadn't been there, if I didn't have the durability correction from the Proof of Protection...
If the cut had been just a little deeper, I would be dead.
The severed life signal flickered back on. Then the alarm started blaring frantically, as if only just registering the crisis.
My returning consciousness was flooded with chaos. There were too many things that felt strange and confusing.
The enemy didn't wait for me to pull myself together.
The man standing far in the distance... the 2nd Iteration's figure blurred.
His movements, which even scattered the data of my Observation, were probably a Technique Category expansion ability.
But he hadn't fully escaped Observation. I could read his movements, and that meant I could transition into a response.
I gauged where the 2nd Iteration would appear and swung my left arm, wreathed in Aura.
Immediately after, the 2nd Iteration materialized like a ghost and thrust his sword toward me.
Aura coiled over the blade. Crimson Aura carved out a trajectory.
- *Kagagak!*
A sword strike hammered my left arm. Dozens of slashes embedded themselves in an instant, shredding the cloth and arm sleeves covering the arm.
No actual damage. What lay exposed under the tattered clothes wasn't wounded flesh but a white prosthetic arm in a rough-hewn shape.
On top of that, it was a top-grade artifact specialized in durability. Even the 2nd Iteration wouldn't easily break it.
Meaning I could wield my left arm itself as a shield.
Left hand to defense: layer on thick Aura, intercept observed attacks before they reach me.
Right hand to offense: whip out a spear I'd kept ready in Subspace and attack... but I couldn't commit it to attacking.
Forget attacking—I had to keep it on defense just to survive.
He didn't stop moving.
I dodged the attacks I could, and the ones I couldn't I parried, diverted, or blocked with my left hand.
Anything that broke past that, I dealt with using the spear in my right hand.
And whenever I felt myself getting overwhelmed, I called down indiscriminate focused fire from the spirits and attack magic to buy time.
Even using all of that, wounds still built up thickly across my body.
I was clearly observing his movements, yet interpreting them was difficult. Even when I did interpret them, translating that into countermeasures was slow. The 2nd Iteration acted faster.
His pitch-black eyes never stopped moving. They were pried wide open, refusing to lose the slightest track of the world, of every direction, of my movements.
For someone who supposedly sees and moves through a mere pair of eyes, it felt like he was looking at a wider world than I could.
And then there was the accumulated fundamentals, the advanced response capacity, the combat logic that drove his thoughts, the instinct that fired faster than thought.
I was outmatched in nearly every facet of combat.
'This son of a bitch.'
The strike that had been slicing through the air with lethal precision suddenly arced into an abnormal trajectory.
Myriad Combat Arts Expansion Ability
Snake Tail Over the Sharp Wall
Startled by the bizarre phenomenon, I twisted my body. The slash, bending pliantly like a whip, targeted my neck. I knocked it aside with the spear shaft, abandoning any thought of attacking with it.
The attack wasn't over. Using the recoil, the strike violently altered its trajectory and bypassed my defense.
Twenty-four slashes curved in toward me at once.
I dodged eighteen and deflected five.
The last one grazed my shoulder.
*Shwaak!* As expected, a spray of blood shot out. Along with a burning pain, my legs scraped across the ground and I was pushed back.
Before the wound could gape open, I wrapped it with the Sky Wing Feather to stop the bleeding and resumed my counter—
- *Kwaang!*
A sword strike flew in before I could launch an attack. A heavy blow, swung with both hands gripping the hilt.
It clearly wasn't that fast, yet weirdly I couldn't dodge it.
I hurriedly blocked with my left arm.
My body was shoved back again. Not a huge impact, but my left arm trembled minutely. My fingers spasmed on their own.
The Aura didn't break. Instead, a strange vibration radiated from the point of impact on my left arm, spreading through my whole body like a wave.
'Ah, shit, this is...'
Myriad Combat Arts Expansion Ability
Resonance Strike
*Peobeobeong!* The vibration detonated. The resonance explosion burst inside my body, making me lurch violently. Bloody foam erupted, and a gush of blood poured out.
- *Krrrrrk...!*
In that brief gap, another expansion ability was slammed into me.
'This is bad...'
Then the sword in the 2nd Iteration's hand shattered into pieces.
The attacks paused for a moment. In that interval, the 2nd Iteration tossed the broken sword aside and reached toward the empty air.
Ripples shivered through space. Subspace... No, the form was different.
'Inventory!'
A Player Correction I can't even use! Why the hell can that bastard use it just fine?
I couldn't let him get his hands on a weapon. Suppressing the pain, I manifested the Authority of Space. A ripple spread outward from me as the center.
'Space Dominance, Control Jurisdiction, Interference Regulation.'
The 2nd Iteration, who had been about to plunge his hand into the ripple, yanked his arm back.
*Kwadeuk!* The subspace snapped shut an instant too late.
If I'd been a little luckier, I could've torn his wrist clean off. I swallowed my regret and moved into the True Step.
I pushed Body Reinforcement Technique through a body glutted with mana.
*Kung!* My legs dug into the earth and launched me forward.
I twisted the spear shaft tightly and swung. The spear blade carved a half-moon arc as it flew. The 2nd Iteration calmly reached a hand toward the spear.
The Authority of Observation read the omen. His Innate Talent was expanding.
Myriad Combat Arts Expansion Ability
Flowing Cloud...
Another expansion ability. I interpret it. Not offensive. A defensive martial art?
I tightened my grip on the spear shaft.
Whatever it was, I just had to expand on my side too.
I had plenty of data.
Couldn't use it skillfully, but reenactment was more than possible. The rest I could compensate for with the stack of fundamentals I'd built up.
For the first time, the 2nd Iteration reacted.
His eyes widened, if only a little, then he flicked his hand.
All-Rounder Expansion Ability
Myriad Transformations — Snake Tail Over the Sharp Wall
The tip of my spear traced a bizarre trajectory, pierced through his defense, and struck at the 2nd Iteration's neck.