Exploiting Every Card — The Bombardment Tactic

He had walked straight into an unforeseen trap hidden in the strategy itself. Only now did he realize what a sorry state he was in. Wasn't this no different from being 'Linpel Darius' himself? Snap out of it, Ryu Hwi! It felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his head, and Ryu Hwi's mind sharpened to a razor's edge. The observational eye, analytical power, judgment, and strategic instincts he had honed since his days as an analyst — and beyond all of that, the UR YggON system that transcended the game itself. He would seize victory by wielding every last one of them. Let's check the cards in my hand first. YggON's Random Box had one overwhelming strength: anything you pulled, you could use. In other words, he was free from the constraint of being limited to only the skills and items that appeared inside the game labyrinth called Sword Demon Dragon Blade.

Sword Demon, who had been about to unleash his secret ultimate technique, the Dragon Blade of the Demon Sword, suddenly frowned at the 'something' that had appeared right before his eyes. "And what is this pinecone supposed to be? With this, you think you can—!" Struck by the pressure of Sword Demon's aura, the pinecone blazed with brilliant light right in front of him. "Gah?! A thunder bomb disguised as a pinecone? How cowardly can you be…! And you call yourself the inheritor of the Dragon Blade?!" Barely escaping the blast radius in an instant, Sword Demon stared at Ryu Hwi with a look of utter disbelief. "Well, strictly speaking, I'd say I'm the inheritor of YggON." Ryu Hwi smiled brightly as he faced the boss down, and there was something distinctly unsettling about that smile. Even YggON, who usually did nothing but tease him, quietly edged a little farther away. "Analysts, you see, are the kind of people who seize victory by making use of every single card they hold."

YggON said it with pure mischief. This damned vacuum cleaner was, without a doubt, drunk on its own power. "YggON, open the entire inventory." [So in the end, you're leaning on UR YggON after all?] YggON sneered, as if to say, so that's your ceiling, huh? "Didn't I tell you? I'm using every card I have." [Meaning?] "If I need something, I pull it. Whatever I've pulled, I use. Everything I've drawn up until now — that's what you'd call the 'cards' in my hand." [Well said. That's exactly what the master of this UR YggON should sound like.] YggON's attitude flipped on a dime, like a motor had been strapped to its palm. And that was YggON's other great strength—

Everything that had piled up from all those Random Box pulls could be converted back into RP at any time, but he had kept the items he figured might come in handy someday. The prime examples were consumable explosives — landmines, grenades, and the like. Their usefulness changed entirely depending on how you deployed them. "You wretch!" Enraged, Sword Demon charged. And he didn't just charge. With every step he took, shockwaves swept out in all directions, and ferocious sword winds shredded everything around them to ribbons. Ryu Hwi pushed Intuition to its absolute limit as he met Sword Demon's assault head-on, analyzing his every movement. The subtle motions of his hands as he wielded the blade? His footwork? The rhythm of his breathing? Sword Demon pressed in relentlessly, giving him no opening to so much as reach for a bomb — and Ryu Hwi slipped through the attacks while committing all of it to memory. "Found it." He pinpointed the split-second gap that opened between one technique and the next, and hurled a grenade straight through it. "?!" A deafening blast rang out. Riding the backdraft of the explosion, Ryu Hwi flashed forward, already preparing his next move. "You! You think you can escape from this one's grasp?!" "At your speed? I figured you'd keep up." Another grenade appeared right before Sword Demon's eyes. Ryu Hwi had predicted the chase and thrown the grenade ahead of time, directly into his path. The blast thundered out, and the shockwave briefly halted Sword Demon in his tracks. "Tch, you bastard… Huh?!" Ryu Hwi did not let up. He scattered grenade after grenade. Boom! KRAKOOM! Boom! A relentless chain of thunderous explosions. "You fool! You thought mere thunder bombs could fell this one?!" Even after dozens — hundreds — of grenades had gone off, Sword Demon still stood. It seemed the grenades simply weren't dealing damage at all. [Sword Demon's body appears to be covered by a barrier of some kind.] He had expected as much. Every boss he'd encountered in this game protected their bodies with an aura they called Protective Gangqi. "If you're truly the inheritor of the Dragon Blade, then face me proudly with the power of the Dragon Blade itself!" A lethal, battlefield-honed sword art built for one purpose: killing people. Truly, it was a ferocious assault worthy ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the name 'Sword Demon' — but at the tip of that blade, there was no Ryu Hwi to be found. His left flank! Casually evading Sword Demon's strike, Ryu Hwi hurled a bomb at the exposed left side. "Huh?!" Unlike every bomb he'd used so far, this one didn't explode. Instead, it billowed out a sickly yellow gas. "Poison? A pity, but this one has already attained the Realm of Ten Thousand Poisons Repelled! Do you truly believe such a crude trick would work on me?" He was the final boss, after all — poison was useless against him. As if boasting of his poison-proof body, Sword Demon freely inhaled the gas.

"Oh, it'll work. Because this…." Sword Demon had made a fatal miscalculation. This was no poison gas.

"GRRRAAAHH?!" "Anything with a sense of smell is going to react to this one." Unlike the residents of the game labyrinths, he was merely a final boss defined by the system — but as long as he was a 'humanoid', he had to have the five senses.

[And there you go, swiftly donning a gas mask in the middle of your flashy bombing run. Simply admirable.] Sword Demon swung his blade, scattering the gas away. "You dare mock this one?!" Ryu Hwi, who could never have missed that moment of hesitation, threw another bomb in rapid succession. A flashbang so bright it seared the eyes. "GRAAHH?! My—my eyes!" With senses that sharp, it worked far better than expected.

With his sight temporarily sealed, Sword Demon grew calm instead. It didn't matter if his smell and sight were compromised. Even blind, Sword Demon was fully confident he could hunt Ryu Hwi down and kill him. "DIE!!" A wide-area attack that would reduce everything around it to ash. "Rising Dragon Splitting Mountain Sword — Heaven-Reversing Thunder!" True to form for a boss monster, he kindly announced the technique he was about to use. "Going for the finisher with your strongest move, I see." Ryu Hwi had memorized every technique Sword Demon had shown him so far. But with a wide-area skill, he could only grasp the signs of the attack — pinning down its exact range was another matter entirely. And this was precisely where the true value shone through of the skill YggON dismissively called a 'bug-type gimmick': Intuition. "Read it!" The earth shook and dazzling light assaulted all five of his senses, but Intuition pierced through to the essence of the attack, showing him the one safe spot beyond the skill's reach. "You read my attack?! How dare the likes of you—!" "You've got time to worry about me right now? Because there's another bomb sitting right at your feet." Just as he said, a bomb lay at Sword Demon's feet. One Ryu Hwi had quietly slipped out mid-evasion, without Sword Demon noticing. "Hmph! You think the same trick will fool me twice!" "Smell and sight. And next would be…." KRA-KA-KA-KA-KA-BOOOM!! A thunderclap at point-blank ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠range, loud enough to rupture eardrums. "Hearing."

"GRRUUUOOOOHHH?!" He might block the shockwave of the sound itself, but nothing could shield him from the noise pollution hammering his eardrums.

[You are literally playing with your inventory, aren't you.] "Any gamer would immediately find a countermeasure and strike back — but bosses with fixed attack patterns are so wonderfully simple." When it wasn't a head-on clash of raw power against raw power, but a 'monster' to be cleared, Ryu Hwi didn't lose. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Because with the items from his pulls, there was always a way to take down any boss. "Shall we wrap this up, then?" Never once in all his reign as the final boss of Sword Demon Dragon Blade had he been treated this much like a fool. Sword Demon's rage boiled over, all the way to the tips of his hair. The fury burned so hot that he even began to trigger 'behavior outside of his designated parameters'. Errors and bugs erupting in real time, emotions drowned in something pitch-black — Sword Demon roared and took a single step forward. "You insufferable wretch…." At that instant, something touched his forehead. His perception, honed to a lethal edge by pure fury, told him exactly what it was. A bullet. On the far side, Ryu Hwi was grinning. In his entire fight against Sword Demon, Ryu Hwi had not used the Gunsword's fire capability even once. He'd known it would be blocked if he fired it carelessly, so he'd saved it as his trump card. Everything he'd done to provoke Sword Demon until now had also been to catch the split-second opening that rage created. It had all been groundwork laid for this very moment. "Let me tell you the reason you lost." "…." "A 'humanoid' monster like you, Sword Demon — is powerless in front of a gun. And…." A single instant stretched out like an eternity. Sword Demon lost consciousness without ever understanding how he had been defeated. Toyed with from start to finish, driven to the brink of triggering a bug on his own — the boss fell with almost insulting ease. "I was simply stronger than you."

[Call him Sword Demon or whatever you like — one hit and he drops dead. A minnow, really.] "That one hit was what made him so damn hard." In truth, if the fight had gone on as a straight brawl, winning would have been nearly impossible. He was at a level where even reading his next move with Intuition barely left time to react. Ryu Hwi seriously doubted any other gamer could have beaten him once he'd revealed his full power upon meeting the hidden conditions. The ones who left that trap-strategy guide in there… just you wait. Ryu Hwi ground his teeth. [Before UR YggON, a thing like that is nothing more than a minnow. By the way — will you be uploading this video?] "Don't. It's too embarrassing." [What a shame. I edited it so beautifully, too.] "You little…. Ah, and the drop item is another dud. Of course. All the way to the very end, huh." He'd fallen into the trap strategy, triggered the boss enhancement event, lost ground in a head-on fight because the boss got so overpowered, and scraped out a win by the skin of his teeth. The process was such a mess that he couldn't brag about it even if he wanted to. Sword Demon Dragon Blade. In more ways than one, it was a game labyrinth that had brought Ryu Hwi nothing but failure. [But there was something rewarding in it, at least. Do check your achievements.]