SR – Flash Step Lv.4
SR – Flash Step Lv.4
Ryu Hwi used Flash Step and shot straight up into the air.
"Where did he disap—"
The attacker, thrown off balance by the sudden burst of speed, swept his eyes across the surroundings.
"Up here."
"?!"
Riding the full force of his fall, Ryu Hwi drove the Gunsword straight through him.
"GRAAAAAAGH!"
By the rules of the PK Prohibited Zone, the man wouldn't die. His HP wouldn't drop a single point, either.
And yet, for some reason, the pain came through in its entirety.
"AAAAH! UGAAAAAH!"
The attacker thrashed like a madman.
"I knew you'd come ambush me, so I let you have your turn. Now it's time to pay back every bit of what I took."
The PK Prohibited Zone settings were careless to the point of absurdity — and until now, Linzea had been exploiting those very loopholes to torment other gamers.
"You knew perfectly well you could end up on the receiving side too, didn't you?"
The black-clad attacker had no answer to give. He only screamed, again and again.
World of Phantasm had a Defense stat. Defense didn't just reduce damage taken from enemy attacks — it dulled real pain as well.
But right now, that pain-dampening function simply wasn't working. As if Defense itself had been erased from existence.
"Hurts, doesn't it? Well. Of course it does."
The attacker's figure began to blur. Apparently, he was forcing a logout.
[What a shame.]
With YggON's dry remark, the logout was canceled.
"My—my logout?! AAAH! GRAAAAAK!"
Saying nothing, Ryu Hwi churned the Gunsword through the man's insides.
The attacker would be tasting every ounce of the agony of a blade carving through his body.
"Screaming over something this minor? You people have been dishing it out plenty all this time, haven't you?"
"AAH! KRAGH! UUURAAAAAGH!!"
Impaled on the Gunsword, the man couldn't even muster the will to resist. He just kept screaming.
Logout restriction: ten minutes. Every year, gamers ended up as vegetables from so-called 'accidents.' And if this went on, another accident would occur today.
But turning this attacker into a vegetable wasn't the goal.
Ryu Hwi reached for the mask the man wore. It seemed to do more than hide his face — it appeared to block his gamer information entirely.
[Master, we have new enemies.]
His fingertips had all but touched the mask when YggON's warning rang out.
The moment the warning ended, black figures materialized around Ryu Hwi, encircling him.
Ten in total. Every one of them masked.
"Ryu7017."
One of the black-clad attackers stepped forward. He looked to be the one commanding this crew.
"I'll skip the pleasantries and get straight to the point. Quit World of Phantasm. Ideally you'd quit the gamer life altogether, but I won't ask for that much."
The leader spoke with impeccable courtesy.
"Anything bothersome is off the table. As it stands, this is already an enormous bother."
Ryu Hwi snorted, as if nothing could be less funny.
"Says the ones who do nothing but pick at my every gap?"
He drew a Short Sword (R) from his toolbox, jammed it into the fallen attacker's neck, then pulled the Gunsword free.
"KUAAAAAAAK!"
Another scream tore through the air, but Ryu Hwi didn't spare it a glance.
"You stab without the slightest hesitation, I see."
"You do the same, don't you?"
"Most people would hesitate a little, you know. I hadn't heard you were this dangerous a character... At this rate, the numbers just don't work out."
"Then withdraw."
"Being unable to act as one pleases is the eternal plight of the working man, I'm afraid."
Even as they traded light banter, the leader was studying Ryu Hwi's weapon with sharp, careful eyes.
"I saw the videos, but that weapon... it isn't something from World of Phantasm, is it? How exactly did you bring it into the game?"
"Take off your mask first. Then maybe I'll tell you."
"My, what an unreasonable request. You know full well it's impossible, do you not? In any case, it's surely just a bug. Data from other game labyrinths leaking across happens from time to time."
The leader wrote the Gunsword off as nothing more than a glitch.
"Lucky you, stumbling into a bug. You could have simply enjoyed the windfall and played your cozy little game... Why go stirring up trouble and making everyone's lives exhausting?"
The leader scratched the back of his neck and heaved a sigh.
"Regrettably, your 'getaway tool' ends here."
The leader moved. In perfect sync with him, the others surged at Ryu Hwi all at once.
Ryu Hwi observed their movements. He'd never had the chance to watch other gamers fight since entering the labyrinth — so this was valuable.
Hmm. I see. So that's how it is....
Ten men attacking in flawless coordination — and yet not a single blow reached him.
At a glance their movements were fast and flashy, but they shared one fatal flaw.
"What in the—?!"
As the situation turned bizarre, the attackers began to lose their composure.
Ryu Hwi didn't miss the opening. He charged in a single burst.
SR+ – Sword Saint (Ygg) Lv.1
The Gunsword was swallowed whole by pure white light.
At a glance, it looked exactly like an Aura Blade — and so the attackers felt no particular alarm.
Burning MP on an Aura Blade out of nowhere, just like that... I was surprised a gamer who hasn't even set foot in the Tower could manifest Aura at all, but I suppose he's nothing more than a rookie who lucked into a bug?
The leader had pegged Ryu Hwi as a rookie.
Watching Ryu7017's videos, he'd been genuinely astonished — but if it was all done through 'bugs,' it made sense.
So he predicted that Ryu Hwi's Aura Blade level could be no higher than 1. Aura Blade burned brighter as its level climbed, and the light dwelling in Ryu Hwi's blade carried only a faint, subdued shimmer.
One of the attackers met Ryu Hwi head-on with his own Aura.
"With an Aura that pitiful, you—!"
KRA-BOOM──!
"Ghk?!"
An incomprehensible sight unfolded before them.
The instant Ryu Hwi's light collided with the attacker's Aura, the man's Aura shattered in a heartbeat.
And the light spilling from Ryu Hwi's sword did not stop at breaking an Aura — it carved straight through the attacker himself.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAK!"
No matter how deeply the blade cut, HP never dropped. He wouldn't die. But the pain remained exactly as it was.
The attacker slashed by Ryu Hwi's sword rolled his eyes back and crumpled where he stood.
Ryu Hwi glanced back at the attackers still rooted in place. Nine more to go.
The leader realized his prediction had been dead wrong.
Don't tell me... that's a skill from another game labyrinth too?!'
Ryu Hwi wielded Parrying, a skill from a different labyrinth. Having yet another foreign skill wouldn't be strange at all.
Even so, with an output like that, he can't sustain it for long. If I simply wait for the skill's effect to run out—
Even that prediction missed.
"Why is that skill still active?!"
And no wonder—
"My skill doesn't consume MP."
Ryu Hwi's Sword Gang was a passive byproduct of Sword Saint Lv.1. It had nothing whatsoever to do with MP consumption.
To begin with, the very concept of MP did not exist for Ryu Hwi.
He looked around at the bewildered attackers.
"How am I supposed to enjoy the gamer life when there are bastards out there running around installing game labyrinths like they own them?"
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
The leader intended to play dumb right up to the end.
"Eh, whatever. Fine by me. I've found my own way to enjoy this trash-reeking place, you see. That's exactly why I reeled you in."
"Reeled us in?"
Sensing something off in Ryu Hwi's words, the leader asked warily, keeping his eyes locked on the space ahead.
"Anti-personnel combat training, playtime edition. Until now I've only ever fought monsters, and it had me uneasy — how well could I actually hold up against gamers? I needed sparring partners."
"Sparring... partners..."
"I already knew bastards like you would come, so I've been waiting in this backwater village. Even you can't move freely somewhere crowded, after all."
"You're saying you baited us here?"
Ryu Hwi flashed a wide grin and rested the Gunsword across his shoulder.
"Resuming the anti-personnel tutorial."
Ryu Hwi was short on PvP experience.
Not that he could simply pick fights with any gamer he pleased. He was under considerable scrutiny at the moment, so reckless moves were out of the question.
In that sense, the current situation was an opportunity.
These men were the perfect 'experience points' for filling in his missing PvP experience.
Ryu Hwi calmly studied their movements.
High STR granted genuine physical strength. High DEX sharpened control over one's own body. High AGI made a person nimbler. High INT raised intellect and processing power. High VIT fortified the flesh itself.
A game labyrinth's stats weren't merely numbers on a sheet — they bled directly into a gamer's physical movements.
He wanted to know exactly to what extent.
The attackers' abilities were impressive, but not overwhelming. Ryu Hwi, receiving no physical stat compensation whatsoever, could handle them well enough on the strength of his skill boosts alone.
He deflected their attacks with room to spare, then exploited every gap to drive his blade home.
The screams in the village square never stopped.
"Damn it! Damn it! Ugh, AAAAH! My—my arm! AGH! AAAAH!"
An attacker with a severed arm wailed on the ground.
"Damn it all, is he just flat-out ignoring Defense?! This genuinely doesn't add up! Watch yourselves — don't let anything land!"
In that brief span, the leader — watching his screaming comrades — grasped the secret hidden within Ryu Hwi's attacks.
"Switch to raid loadout!"
Until now, to conceal their identities, they had fought with unfamiliar secondary weapons rather than their practiced arms. But judging the situation too dangerous, the leader decided to bring out the equipment they'd kept hidden.
"Arondight, Grand Saber, Pitch-Black Moonlit Night — every one of them frontline weapons, hm? Guess there's no more room to hide, is there."
The gear in their hands now was the 'real' arsenal, the ones they used every day. Their skills and stats would be fully tuned to those main weapons as well.
From this point on was their true strength.
"So we get the privilege of witnessing the power of frontline 'Phantasma'? Well, either way — it's still just a tutorial."
Their pride as Phantasma — the elite gamers standing atop World of Phantasm — had been struck a direct blow, and the attackers made no effort to hide their fury.
"First time being looked down on like this, is it? Well, fair enough — you've always been the 'haves' until now. Haven't you?"
"You certainly have a gift for grating on people's nerves. Would it kill you to close your mouth?"
"Too noisy? Ah — sorry, sorry. Got a little carried away. Didn't know this about myself, but I get awfully chatty when my blood's up."
Ryu Hwi stole a glance at the main weapon the leader carried.
Twin blades known as Pitch-Black Moonlit Night. Few gamers alive currently wielded them.
"It'd be absolutely hilarious if Cesseus — the famed twin-blade swordsman of Linzea Guild — came marching in at the head of his men and got beaten down by one guy. Don't you think?"
"Kill him!"
At the command, the attackers moved as one.
The real fight began now.