Farming Efficiently (3)
Contrary to my worries, the party hunt proceeded without any real interference.
On the first day we hunted straight through for four hours and no one bothered us, and the party members seemed to take a genuine liking to one another. When someone suggested we meet again tomorrow, nobody objected.
And so came the second day.
Now that the faces were familiar, everyone had grown considerably warmer with each other. Today, as always, the chatter kicked off the moment Wildbird the Bard opened her mouth. It had started as a conversation about item setups, but as the talk wandered, attention eventually swung my way.
The Grappler, FundoshiManiac, was the one who asked. He was a siege-guild member in this party — surprisingly cheerful for an older guy, though the appearance that seemed to explain his nickname was a little painful to look at.
"By the way, Ga-wol, how do you even use that Chain-Sickle? I saw it for the first time yesterday and asked a friend about it, and he said that thing wasn't made to be used."
"It's decent once you get used to it. Practice is all it takes."
"Ah…"
The Grappler nodded. He didn't look entirely satisfied, but he didn't press further either.
The Chain-Sickle was, without question, a finicky weapon. Soft weapons as a category — nunchaku, whips, nine-section chains, anything that flexed — were already hard to learn and demanded a high degree of mastery. Among them, the Chain-Sickle I used was difficult enough that calling it the worst of the lot would not have been an overstatement. In real life I never would have even considered it. But this was a game. A little system assistance plus some practice had brought me to a usable level.
Truthfully, it still wasn't something I'd pull out as a main weapon — but the higher you climbed, the more people simply never accounted for it, and that was when it paid off. More than anything, the reach was excellent. Among melee classes it was practically unmatched. When you had to pull mobs like this, it was incredibly convenient. Without it I'd have to throw projectiles, and restocking those cost money. Once the expenses started leaking, they added up fast. You saved what you could save.
"Do you usually party-hunt like this, Ga-wol?"
"Not often. Just when the opportunity comes up."
"That explains it — I party pretty regularly and I've never run into you. Guess this was lucky."
"I wouldn't go so far as to call it luck… Mm. But hearing you say that does make me happy."
Wildbird's words, quietly building me up. She was probably just saying something nice to hear — which only made it feel better. If everyone got what they wanted out of it, wasn't that a happy arrangement all around?
And so the hunt with my first fan was going smoothly when, at last, the thing I'd been waiting for arrived.
Dongmitam has started streaming!
Everyone except the two civilians — the Berserker and the Bard — went quiet. From the party leader, the Sniper, a whisper arrived almost immediately.
The Grappler seemed to be coordinating with someone as well. I couldn't hear a voice, but his mouth was moving. I was at the front of the party, so I could see him; the others were facing the wrong way and wouldn't notice, so he was managing it well enough.
I opened Dongmitam's stream myself. I parked the screen I had no desire to watch in a corner of my interface, then adjusted my settings so only AnnihilationTorch could hear my voice. Only then could I address the thing that had been bothering me.
"Just call me hyung. 'Noona' is kind of embarrassing."
"If I say I don't like it, then I don't like it. Once this is over we're strangers — you planning on seeing me that often?"
The last reply came a little late. He didn't seem fully convinced, but that was his problem.
I knew how other people saw me. One glance in a mirror outside and you'd see a delicate face, and because of a headset that couldn't scan motion properly, Ga-wol's body matched my real one almost perfectly. Even with a body like this, my defenses weren't strong enough to keep insisting I was a man. After I'd forgotten the voice filter once, I'd given up on hiding my gender entirely. But accepting that in my heart was a completely different matter. My head still felt the disconnect — and it wasn't a pleasant one. Learning to love a girl's body… that was going to take a very long time.
"What's the Grappler guy planning to do? We need to eat the first hit for any of this to work."
I could picture the situation well enough. For the justification we'd planned to hold water, someone on our side had to become a victim first. At the very least, one party member had to die before we could protest that our hunt had been ruined. The problem was not knowing who that would be… but as long as it wasn't me or AnnihilationTorch, things shouldn't get too tangled. I, at minimum, could not afford to die. I'd gotten better at enduring ordinary pain, but it was still unpleasant. Taking hits just to hand them a pretext wasn't worth a four-hour login penalty — or worse.
"Depends on the situation. Fair warning — if they come for me first, I'm countering immediately."
My build was damage-focused, so I didn't need to swap much gear. The Grappler and the Sniper were a different story. Once the fight started and someone went down, I'd have to buy time for a while. The Chain-Sickle was hard to use in a chaotic brawl. I switched to daggers and tucked a spare weapon inside my clothes in advance.
The moment I changed weapons, Wildbird asked in that innocent tone of hers,
"Hm? Not using the Chain-Sickle anymore?"
"I forgot to repair it earlier and the durability's hanging by a thread. I'll fix it next break."
"Hehe. So even Ga-wol is human."
Not that a break is ever going to come.
Still… I hope Wildbird doesn't die.
On the newly opened stream, a dense green forest whipped past the camera. Around the time ruined structures came into view, Dongmitam swept his surroundings in a quick scan. No other hostiles nearby. At this rate he'd reach the Ancient Weapons Depot soon enough — and today's prey would be waiting there.
Today he'd brought two Assassins specifically to make killing the Sniper easy. He could handle the front line himself, and he'd brought a Mage for firepower plus a high-ranking Priest. A Sniper whose specialty was long-range kiting would die without getting a thing done. Just in case, he'd even staged another party as backup.
"Title says it all. Going to squash one little bug. I'll fill you in on what happened as we go."
Streamer Dongmitam. In-game name: DongtanMissyDiscipline.
Lately, he'd had a lot to be angry about. The little brother he'd treated well had stabbed him in the back the moment military service ended, and the stream he'd poured so much into was trending downward day after day. He'd started with an edgy concept, but these days it just wasn't landing. Which was only natural, really. A grab-specialist class taking screenshots of female characters! That deranged act had drawn crowds at first, but popularity of that kind never lasted. Without any long-term content, his stream was always going to wither.
"…And then this AnnihilationTorch bastard goes and betrays me. Fine — I waited until he finished his service, so the backstab itself, whatever. But why take the guild items? Is this guy not the greediest piece of shit alive?"
And right then, Dongmitam had found himself a convenient excuse. With the justification of punishing a traitor, he could get as toxic as he wanted.
Eyes glittering with greed and rage fixed on a party mid-hunt. Dongmitam's reputation was poor in any number of ways, but he had no small amount of experience on the siege scene. He sized up AnnihilationTorch's party members at a glance.
The Grappler had both nickname and guild hidden. The Assassin had only the nickname hidden — no guild. The Sniper was the one who needed to die, so he knew that one well, and the remaining two had nothing worth noting for either name or guild.
"Hyung. The Grappler looks suspicious."
"I know. Don't touch him, and don't kill the Assassin for now either. I'll cut the Bard myself — you take the Berserker."
An obvious play. Dongmitam's mind spun fast. If a guy who ought to be holed up somewhere quiet had come out for a leisurely hunt, there was only one answer: something was up with that Grappler. And if SSA was making a move like this, Dongmitam had his own ways of handling it.
Kill the traitor no matter what. The Grappler's side would complain, but slotting in his own party members as replacements would shut that down. Then nobody could say a word about disrupting a hunt.
"Huh? Who suddenly—"
Dongmitam shot forward and seized the Bard's head. His body was massive enough that a halfling's skull fit neatly in one hand. After that, all he had to do was wait for the skill animation to finish. From the moment the Grab landed, the queued motions were already running. All Dongmitam had to do was chain the combos and take his screenshots.
The chat was loving it. Matching their energy, Dongmitam went all out. A muscular male character slammed the halfling into the ground with brutal force. Wildbird's health bar shredded away, but that apparently wasn't enough — he drove her down harder several more times. At last he finished it by burying an axe in the fallen Bard's heart, complete with a triumphant shout.
"Herbivore pest, deleted! If the big dogs show up, you keep your eyes down and clear the area, yeah? Am I right?"
That took out their support. A call came in that the Berserker was cleaned up too, so if the other side had any sense they'd choose to retreat.
But then a strange system message appeared before his eyes.
NewCityMissyHunter has been slain by an unknown adventurer.
That was wrong. That guy shouldn't go down that easily.
He turned too late. The Assassin was already charging the Priest — eyes filled with a fury so cold it might as well have been a killing frost.
"Wh—what the hell is that? Stop her!"