Who Are We?
Who Are We?
Thousands of soldiers.
Hundreds of knights.
Hundreds of wizards, and dozens of priests.
And holy water, enough to fill a rather large crate.
On the day the demon was supposed to descend, people were literally packed like grains of sand at the assembly point.
It was fortunate we'd roughly pinpointed the demon's descent location. Thanks to that, we could all gather in one place like this.
No matter where I turned my head, my vision was filled with people.
All of them were combat personnel in full gear.
"...Wow."
Chae-rin let out a quiet breath of admiration at the sight.
Even if this was the first raid, I never imagined this many people would show up.
And this was after they'd already filtered the applicants.
The participation requirement was to be at least a C-Rank Adventurer in strength.
By Otherworlder standards, the minimum level for a C-Rank Adventurer was 60.
You had to be at least level 60 just to take part in this raid.
From their perspective, that was a pretty harsh condition.
Naturally, there'd been some grumbling in the community.
Saying, "Isn't this just blatant favoritism for high-level players?"
Of course, since the game company barely communicated with users at all, it didn't cause much of a stir.
[Damn, that's a lot of people]
[No lag with this many gathered?]
[Server can actually handle this?]
[Whoa, hardcore, hardcore]
Naturally, Yoo Chae-rin was currently streaming.
As a streamer, she couldn't miss a large-scale event like this.
Although, since so many broadcasters had gathered here, her viewer count wasn't exactly getting inflated.
As she looked around, taking in the spectacle, Chae-rin suddenly noticed something new.
It was that within the deployed army, most of the people at the very front line were players like herself.
Well, the NPCs didn't volunteer much in the first place, since their lives were precious.
So most of the soldiers who volunteered were players anyway.
But even taking that into account, the players were too concentrated at the front.
She could even see wizard and priest classes, who should have been in the rear, at the front line.
Viewers who caught on to the same thing started chiming in.
[They plan to use us as bullet sponges, right, since we just resurrect anyway]
[I get it, but still kinda pisses me off lol]
[But if you think about getting your gear back and 50,000 gold, isn't it a total steal?]
Well.
Chae-rin read the last chat and silently disagreed.
Dying locked you out of the game for three days, which was a pretty big deal. Especially for a game streamer like herself.
A three-day gap hit her pretty hard.
She could do a Just Chatting stream, sure, but with [Demon's Saga] being so dominant right now, a simple chatting stream wasn't popular.
Even if she did, she'd be logged into the game while doing it.
Still, the reason she joined this subjugation was that it was worth the risk.
She could show the raid to her viewers, and if she managed to distinguish herself, she could get more rewards.
The odds were slim, of course... but you never know what might happen, right?
That was what she was thinking, her hopes running wild, when it happened.
Someone she knew came into view.
"Oh?"
Chae-rin approached the other person, her face lighting up.
"Ha-neul!"
The person was her editor,
The one who mainly used the nickname 'Black Kitty' online—Im Ha-neul.
She had wavy black hair, black eyes, and rectangular glasses with thick lenses.
And a chest noticeably larger than other people's.
A few viewers recognized her and said hello. She didn't appear often, but she'd shown up on stream occasionally like this.
For reference, she also doubled as the manager for Yoo Chae-rin's stream.
[Oh, it's the manager, hey]
[This slacker's here playing games instead of editing lol]
[Wait a sec, if she's here...?]
[Oh?]
[Sexsexboodidjadi]
[Crazy bitch lolololololol]
The viewers, realizing she was in-game, slowly started stirring things up.
Dangerous remarks, the kind that could get them banned, began creeping into the chat window.
For a moment, Im Ha-neul's brow furrowed.
[Yor, even if I have to bear your child!]
[↳ User has been kicked by the manager.]
[Whoa]
[So the stream is on...?]
[^^7]
[^^7;;]
But of course, that spark of rebellion was extinguished in just a few seconds.
Chae-rin let out a sigh of relief.
This happened sometimes.
Im Ha-neul, who had conservative tendencies, ran the chat in a fairly strict and serious way.
The oppressed viewers occasionally staged a rebellion.
Chae-rin spent a little time chatting idly, waiting for the raid to begin.
After waiting just a short while, an alert popped up before her eyes, and the front began to stir.
[The demon, Andromalius, has descended!]
The demon had finally appeared.
"Do not be afraid! Fight with bravery! The lives of the people rest in your hands!"
The commander stepped forward to raise morale. The wizards coordinated to prepare grand magic.
The priests were chanting prayers and casting buffs.
Yoo Chae-rin also pulled herself together and drew a pair of daggers.
They were her newest gear, crafted from the two fangs of a mutated wolf.
With these, she thought, it wasn't impossible for her to achieve something great!
"Waaaaah!!!"
Listening to the war cries erupting from all around, she charged at the demon.
It took less than five minutes from that point for her to be killed by a single blow from the demon.
*
+
[Alright everyone, repeat after me]
We are total dogshit
+
[We are total dogshit]
[↳ You are nothing]
[↳ I am nothing...]
+
[All the users who joined the raid grinning, all wiped in 10 mins lolol]
So that's why they only took high-levels lol
+
[In order to let late starters catch up, we have decided to suspend all high-level players for 3 days lololol]
[↳ Lololololololol]
[↳ But you made 50,000 gold, right? Cheers to that]
[The streamer I was watching ended stream 3 minutes into the raid, I was like wtf]
[↳ Who are we?]
[↳ NPCs' sidekicks]
+
[What's even more ridiculous is that this demon was a comparatively weak boss]
In the end, we died and whittled its HP down, so the Fifth Knight Commander went and lopped its head off
And then she said, "That was truly an easy finish this time..." like, for real wtf;
(Video)
I survived because I was hiding like a total coward, so I saw it all the way to the killing blow
If anyone's curious, take a look
+
Tap—
A bar near her house.
Yoo Chae-rin, who was having dinner with her editor, pressed play on the video in the post.
Since she'd died much faster than expected, she'd decided to just get her dinner appointment out of the way too.
The subjugation video that began playing showed the situation in its final stages.
Andromalius, its HP drained by the players, was now in single combat against the Fifth Knight Commander.
Slash—! With a chilling sound, Andromalius's left arm fell.
The snake coiled around that arm writhed for a while before going still.
Suffering a grievous wound, it screamed something incomprehensible.
—Damn you, Seere! Was it not your turn to descend this time! The blood that brat possessed should have been yours as well, and yet you dare offer me up as the vanguard!?
It sounded like it was speaking to someone else rather than the opponent in front of it.
Now that I looked, its attacks seemed less like trying to conquer the world and more like a desperate struggle to survive.
And so, after fighting with desperate resistance, its head was severed by the knight commander's sword.
That was the end of it.
Excluding the Otherworlders, zero casualties. Some NPCs were seriously injured, but none with life-threatening wounds.
It was, in a word, a perfect victory.
As such, the faces shown on screen looked bright.
Everyone was rejoicing at having survived, embracing nearby comrades.
After watching the full video, Yoo Chae-rin scrolled down to look at the comments.
[It really does seem weak;]
[↳ And that weakling still wiped the floor with all of us lol]
[But if it's 72nd, isn't that total trash?]
[↳ This bitch thinks the number means a ranking lololol]
[↳???]
[↳ It wasn't? Gasp]
[↳ Ah, so nobody knew, mb]
Honestly, this raid was closer to spectating than participating.
How to put it, rather than the players directly joining in and forging the story,
it felt more like watching a game trailer.
Of course, since it's an open-world RPG with high freedom, there's no such distinction.
Which meant that this time, the Otherworlders were little more than spectators.
As if to say we weren't ready yet, this fight was literally on a different level.
"Haa, what am I supposed to do for the next three days?"
Finishing her thought, Chae-rin let out a light sigh.
Her character was currently dead, so she was on a forced break from streaming for the next three days.
Since she'd even taken a leave of absence from school, she was effectively a total bum for the time being.
"That's why I told you to hang back a little. They wouldn't be giving out money just for participating."
As she was lamenting, her editor, sitting across from her, spoke up.
Unlike her, who wiped in five minutes, Im Ha-neul was a survivor who'd seen the battle through to the end.
That was because she'd hidden like a coward... no, it was because her class was the comparatively safe wizard.
And having a quiet, cool-headed personality to begin with, she knew how to ensure her own safety.
"I was thinking of going to see Yor once this week, but that's shot now too."
Chae-rin said, as if complaining, while sipping her drink for a moment.
Hearing that, Ha-neul couldn't help but object.
"Why are you going to see that NPC so often lately?"
"What, you were the one who told me to get friendly with him."
"No, well, that's true, but..."
These days, Chae-rin was literally living in the game.
As her close older friend, not just her editor, Ha-neul wanted to tell her to live a little in the real world.
Even though Im Ha-neul, who was saying this, was a shut-in herself who did nothing but edit in her room...
Still, she couldn't help worrying just a little.
Because sometimes, those things happened.
Cases where players lost their hearts to NPCs that were too human. You could almost call it a modern-day Pygmalion.
With the Assimilation Rate letting you adjust your senses, and 19+ Mode existing, it was inevitable that people would grow attached.
She understood that, but you couldn't let it steal your whole heart.
You had to separate reality from fantasy.
Getting deeply invested in an NPC only ended up hurting you in the end.
But on the other hand, curiosity arose within her too.
That NPC called Yor she'd seen in the videos was certainly charming.
So it was only natural that Ha-neul found herself thinking this.
'Should I go see him once?'
Her employer was suspended for three days anyway, so there'd be no editing to do.
It didn't sound like a bad idea.
As she tilted her glass, her eyes grew deeper and deeper.