The Genre Has Changed
A Level 7 Gate was by no means small.
The term “another dimension” was no exaggeration. It boasted a scale massive enough to swallow an entire city whole.
And among those, the currently broadcast “Oasis’s Guardian” was especially huge….
The vast desert had vanished.
It was now buried beneath monsters.
The shocking sight of the desert turning into a sea of monsters left the broadcast team completely speechless.
— “……”
— “……Huh.”
— “……In the end, it’s the Mir Guild that activated all seventeen remaining oases to stage two. With this, every one of the twenty-one strongholds is now active.”
— “In my entire broadcasting career, I’ve never seen this many monsters.”
— “The field is literally packed with them. Razor Claws, Thorn Hyenas, Sandmen, and… oh, was that a Sand Golem they just killed? There are so many. Too many to even describe.”
— “No kidding. It’s suffocating just watching.”
Shouldn’t there be a trypophobia warning for this?
The sheer absurdity even brought up such a pointless question. The scene was so dizzying it made the veteran broadcast team feel ill.
And the viewers watching this shocking match alongside them instinctively understood.
The genre of the match had just changed!
Honestly, before the match even started, it was true that “Oasis’s Guardian” had felt like a letdown. After all, it was a defense format.
Fixed positions, no movement, just slaughtering monsters from dawn to dusk. For light fans and neutral viewers who simply wanted entertainment, it wasn’t pleasant even as a joke. They were annoyed that a big match between super teams was taking place in such a boring gate.
But!
Our Great Emperor God Lee Shin had flipped the script completely.
Just as someone said, he had turned a boring defense match into a spectacular survival game—a battle royale! He had delivered one hell of a fun gift!
Survival instead of defense.
Battle royale instead of defense.
The intensity on the hunters’ faces captured on screen was on a completely different level. The expressions of those holding the barricades openly showed the genuine terror of what would happen if they broke. The tankers gritting their teeth looked utterly desperate. The sight of a mage who had been spamming wide-area magic dry-heaving after drinking a mana potion was enough to bring tears to the eyes. And the real-time shot of a hunter’s soul visibly leaving his body while staring at the monster wave that still filled the horizon even after hours of hunting became an instant legendary meme.
One could say with confidence that there had never been such a spectacular match before.
There had never been a more entertaining match either!!
At the very least, it was the greatest match of the season.
But those were the words circulating among fans who purely sought entertainment….
These people were different.
The fans of the guilds currently suffering on screen felt like they were tumbling down into hell alongside their teams.
The fans of the relatively weaker Challenger Guild and Core Guild had gone beyond rage and were practically begging.
They had known it would be a difficult match. They were the ones who had stayed up all night crying after seeing the matchups. That was why both guilds’ fandoms had unanimously set their sights on third place as if by agreement.
They had prepared themselves mentally, yet….
Even in a simple weight-class fight it would be untouchable, right? Stop the bullshit, please. We’re ridiculously weak…….
No matter how you looked at it—whether as a new fan, a ten-year league veteran, or even on triple-speed playback—it was obvious.
The gate situation had already gone beyond third or fourth place.
It was now a question of whether they could hold out until the end at all.
And though they hated to admit it… though they were terrified to say it out loud, most fans believed with high probability that they could not.
On the other hand, while the fans of the preceding Challenger and Core Guilds had filled the chat with rage and pleading “T_T”s, the atmosphere in Taeyang Guild’s fandom, the “Sunflowers,” was comparatively better.
It was no coincidence that Lee Shin viewed Guardian as the commander closest to the Mountain King.
With her outstanding intellect and Taeyang Guild’s vast information network, she had faintly sensed the “trolling” and taken the best possible measures.
Thanks to the rapid fortress construction, they were relatively free from the arrow barrages raining down from above while also not having to endure the incoming monster waves with barricades alone.
And furthermore….
Taeyang Guild had pushed their search team—their greatest strength—to the limit and raised the wave stage all the way to nine.
That was a two-stage difference from the Mir Guild, which remained at stage seven. They had seized the advantage for the upcoming score battle.
However, no matter how great Guardian was, the guild’s current situation was not good.
It was merely damage control. The problems that had arisen had not disappeared.
The noticeable gap in wide-area dealers was glaring.
The search team was no longer an advantage.
And finally, the decisive factor—sustain far lower than expected.
Guardian and Taeyang Guild had prepared a perfect tactic just like when they had defeated the Mir Guild.
From squad composition to equipment, everything was flawless.
Yet that very perfection had become a shackle the moment Lee Shin’s utterly vicious and ruthless trolling flipped the board one hundred and eighty degrees.
In the end, how could they have predicted the genre would change from defense to battle royale? If they had, they would have crammed in as many healers as possible.
Eventually even the Sunflowers, unable to hold back any longer, poured out praise once more.
And as if by appointment, they had no choice but to seek out that person.
Their raid leader.
So the Sunflowers clasped their hands in prayer, and as if in answer, Guardian was burning herself out as well.
The fortress walls built around the oasis.
They were rough and unsightly, carved from a rocky mountain, yet they served as an excellent anchor for Taeyang Guild as they faced the horrific monster wave.
And at the most vulnerable point of that defensive line stood she.
Guardian Yeo Eun-seo.
Taeyang Guild’s raid leader.
Slice—!
Guardian’s blade cut down a monster. The spear stuck beside her pierced the throat of another on the opposite side, and with a single leap she severed the arm of one clinging to the wall with its claws.
At that moment, as if refusing to be outdone, her partner—the Bengal tiger—also climbed onto the wall and bit off the head of a Razor Claw trying to scale it.
A head torn off in a single bite befitting its house-sized body.
For a brief moment her arrows flashed through the spraying blood.
Thud—!!
They pierced the throat of a Razor Claw that had just set its filthy foot on the wall.
The creature fell with an unpleasant shriek and was crushed beneath the feet of its monster kin that covered the ground.
Immediately after, Guardian’s arrows rained down like a storm and swept the area clean.
While her hands and weapons held back the surging monster wave, Guardian’s mouth never stopped moving.
“Ranged dealers, focus long-range monsters first! Leave the Thorn Hyenas alive on purpose!”
“Mages, prioritize wide-area magic! Supporters, help out too!”
“Close-range dealers, actively take out anything that climbs up and act as support!”
“Hold the points! Never leave your posi—tion!!”
Whoosh!!
Guardian finished her sentence in a burst and instantly eliminated three monsters ahead of her.
As if to prove that multitasking was the basic qualification of a world-class commander, Guardian Yeo Eun-seo was throwing her body into the fiercest part of the battlefield while simultaneously issuing commands based on information transmitted through totems placed throughout the formation.
Two hours passed. Four hours…….
Just as Guardian Yeo Eun-seo continued blocking the endless monster wave no matter how many she killed.
The mana fluctuated.
“……!!”
A tyrannical power scattered for a moment.
In an instant, blinding light engulfed the area.
The monsters screamed with their eyes closed.
Yet Guardian, with superhuman willpower, did not close her eyes. She was able to witness with her own two eyes the massacre that unfolded within that light.
Crackle—!
Regardless of type or number.
The monsters wrapped in light were sliced clean in half from the crown of their heads and deleted without even being able to let out a scream.
It was truly the pinnacle of tyranny.
And if there was anyone in the guild capable of delivering a strike this powerful, it could only be him.
The Sword Master…….
“Park Gwang-seob.”
“Haaaaaaaam…… Good work. It’s time for the shift.”
Sure enough, Park Gwang-seob was walking over while letting out a long yawn.
The more urgent the situation, the more important it was to preserve key forces.
That was why, no matter how dangerous the battle became, Taeyang Guild made sure even the Sword Master and other rankers got at least two hours of sleep.
Of course, with one exception here—Guardian.
“You should go get at least an hour of sleep too. Those dark circles are…….”
“It’s fine. Who else is going to command? I have to endure until the battlefield stabilizes.”
“When is it going to stabilize?”
“It’s annoying, so don’t talk to me.”
“Even when I’m worrying about you, you still snap at me.”
When Yeo Eun-seo growled and walked past the persistently prying Park Gwang-seob, her friend responded with a middle finger.
Yeo Eun-seo let out a small laugh at the childish sight, then let out a deep sigh.
‘It can’t be helped. The situation is serious.’
She knew he was worried and appreciated his concern, but right now there was truly nothing to be done.
With the board completely flipped by Lee Shin, no one could predict which way the battle would swing.
If there was no commander to serve as the center in this situation, they could be swept away by that massive monster wave and left adrift at any moment.
‘If I had known, I would have trained sub-commanders in advance.’
The face of that hunter wearing ridiculously large goggles—Lee Hye-jung—came to mind, and Yeo Eun-seo once again felt the difference in foundation between the Mir Guild and Taeyang Guild.
‘No matter how evenly we matched our forces, the gap is clear.’
Some would curse Lee Shin for trolling, but as a commander herself, Yeo Eun-seo did not want to do that.
This too was a strategy, a path to victory. Rather, she resented herself for not anticipating it beforehand as a commander.
Anyway, once the board they had built collapsed like this, the difference in the two guilds’ foundations—which had been hidden behind Guardian’s command and Taeyang Guild’s support, such as sub-commander operation and detached unit tactics—became starkly obvious.
‘You aimed for exactly this, didn’t you?’
In her imagination, Lee Shin was smiling.
You have talent, but you’re still far from ready.
Like a teacher gently scolding a student, Lee Shin smiled kindly at her. Instead of feeling discouraged, Yeo Eun-seo grit her teeth and raised her fighting spirit.
Grind.
“All right. We can’t lose.”
Give up helplessly just because they had been hit?
Yeo Eun-seo had no such option.
She would follow no matter what. Even if she had to crawl on her hands and knees, she would land at least one blow. Even if the end was defeat, she would never bend.
That was the strength that had made Yeo Eun-seo into Guardian.
“Horus!!”
And around the time Guardian went to find Horus, her only search team, Lee Shin’s final arrangement was moving within the Mir Guild camp.
On the similarly built fortress wall where they were firing at the stumps, the Mountain King spoke.
“Lee Hye-jung.”
“I’ll head out now.”
The eyes of Lee Hye-jung behind her goggles turned toward the sky.
The sunset had vanished, and the sky was growing dark.
Night had come.