Nightfall - When Gods Are Slain (1)
Lately, Winter had fallen into a habit: before going live, she would swing by the community sites and dig through posts about Yujin—or about herself.
Winter had been snickering her way through post after post when, without warning, her face went rigid.
Zero upvotes. Zero comments. That alone told you everything: the kind of worthless garbage post you could find anywhere if you wandered the community sites long enough, Powell Gallery included.
And Winter knew that perfectly well. The nameless person who wrote it almost certainly didn't hate her with any real passion—odds were they hadn't been thinking anything at all.
That was simply what community garbage was. The one who took it seriously was the one who lost.
Even knowing that, Winter still felt a sharp ache settle in her chest. Because she knew something else just as clearly: the post wasn't wrong. If anything, it had simply put into words the thought she had been turning over in private.
Objectively speaking, I'm nowhere near as skilled as Oppa. No… it's not just skill.
Compared to Yujin, Winter fell short in every category—not merely mechanical ability, but the charisma that pulled people in, the aura that clung to a person. That was why she had been doomed to live as a mid-tier streamer at best, and if you were honest, as a nobody.
Until a few days ago, that is—until she started the Nightfall streams with Yujin and her viewer count exploded.
Of course, having dozens of times more viewers than before was not a bad thing. But those dozens of times more viewers had come for Yujin, not for Winter.
Because the channel still belonged to her, and because she made herself as invisible as possible whenever Yujin played Nightfall, no one had said much so far. But if they kept this format—Yujin appearing on Winter's stream—noise would inevitably start leaking out somewhere.
The post she had just read was, for now, nothing but a trash thread with no comments and no upvotes. That did not mean the chance was zero that, a few days from now, a flood of raw insults and complaints about Winter would rack up recommendations and climb to the top of the boards.
So she had to decide. Here and now. How she was going to treat Yujin from this point forward.
…No. The truth was, Winter already knew which choice she had to make. Thinking it through in her head and actually making the decision were simply two different things—that was the only reason she had hesitated.
Having settled it at last, Winter carefully parted her trembling lips and spoke to Yujin.
"Oppa… can we talk for a second?"
Time passed, and before long it was nearly time for Yujin and Winter's stream.
The broadcast hadn't officially started yet, but viewers were already gathering in Winter's channel, trading messages among themselves.
While they traded the usual nonsense, stream time drew near and the viewers began to pour in one after another.
The count alone hit a full twenty thousand.
Considering that Winter used to pull maybe eight hundred concurrent viewers at best, the growth was nothing short of staggering.
Then the clock struck, and the stream went live in earnest.
Where Yujin or Winter's face should have appeared immediately, a video began to play instead.
Caw— caw—
Crows wheeled and shrieked over a bleak Gothic city. Grotesque beasts prowled the streets. And one man walked toward that city for the sole purpose of killing them.
That was when the viewers finally recognized what they were watching.
Exactly. The video was a Nightfall advertisement—something Powell Software had slipped in as a trial run before the full DLC campaign kicked off.
They were still noisily watching the Nightfall ad when, all at once, something felt off.
This wasn't the Nightfall trailer they knew. Something was different. Viewers were tilting their heads in confusion when the Hunter's face came into clear view from the front—and that face belonged to none other than Yujin's avatar inside Nightfall.
That was it. To make the advertisement land even harder, Powell Software had set the face of Nightfall's protagonist—the Hunter—to Yujin's face. They had also cut in mid-trailer footage of Yujin fighting Ariandel, and of him clashing with a Ruler, maximizing the impact.
When the ad ended, the screen went black again, then brightened. At the center sat a man wearing an easy smile.
"Hey chat. Great to see you all. I'm Soma."
"Alright, alright. I know you've all got a lot of questions, so I'll walk through them one by one."
This was his first time running a stream completely alone without Winter's help, and yet Yujin guided the chat with total ease, fully in command of the broadcast.
"First, about the name. Until now I've only been a guest on my sister Winter's channel, so I couldn't really call myself a proper streamer. I figured there was no real need to pick a name."
That was no longer true. After the collab with Ecclesia, and after signing a formal contract with Powell Software, Yujin had decided to stream under his own banner for real.
"I did think about inventing a brand-new name, but if I'm going to do this, better to use something you're already familiar with. So—formal introduction. Streamer Swordmaster. Soma!"
"Soma" was already a name with recognition across every major community site in the country. There was no reason to change it—that was the conclusion Yujin and Winter had reached together.
"Since I've decided to stream properly, we agreed that today I'd run the broadcast alone without Winter's help. A little disappointing for Winter's fans, I know."
"And lastly… before we properly start the stream, I want to explain how I plan to clear the Hidden Route."
"Honestly, I've been pretty worried. The way I clear the Hidden Route is not a normal way to play, so I was concerned it might leave viewers with the impression that Nightfall is this ridiculously hard game."
"But I don't have to worry about that anymore. Because I've received official permission from Powell Software—permission to play however the hell I want without watching the company's face."
Yujin's eyes lit up as he spoke.
"So let me make this perfectly clear, right here. Every boss monster I encounter on this stream, I intend to kill using nothing but a single sword."
In other words, a declaration of intent.
"The one who surpassed all things in this world with nothing but a single blade—Sword Sovereign. And Swordmaster."
It was a vow and a proclamation that, at least in the domain of the sword, no one in this world would ever surpass him.
"That is exactly why I chose the name Swordmaster."