The Perfect Guard's Burden

Damn, I should've just deleted Perfect Guard. Day three of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Bolekia raid. True to the game company's promise of a "desperate level of difficulty," the Bolekia raid was anything but forgiving. Most players figured it couldn't be that bad—maybe three days, four at most. The general consensus was that the third gate with Bolekia himself would be the real wall, while the earlier ones seemed manageable.

But no. They hadn't even laid eyes on Bolekia yet. From the very first gate, they were getting schooled by Dr. Paroma's bomb patterns, and then Professor Palakus's Perfect Guard classroom started cracking skulls. Even on day three, most raid groups hadn't cleared the second gate boss, Palakus, let alone reached the third gate where Bolekia waited.

In that sense, Naise's group reaching the third gate in a single day looked downright impressive. With their lead of roughly one day over everyone else, most people had already written off the first clear as theirs.

But wait—what was this? After hitting the third gate, Naise's group's progress had completely stalled. Meanwhile, the chasers were rapidly closing the gap using the path Naise's group had paved.

Having wasted an entire day sorting out the controversy, Naise's group had fallen behind. So naturally—

—Bzzzt—

It was inevitable that fire would be lit under their feet.

“Ughhh…”

Minji awoke to the worst possible morning a human could experience: waking up late while sick, only to be shaken awake by someone else. Of course, most of it was her own fault, so she had nothing to say. She’d caught the cold by dressing like a pervert for the event, and she’d overslept because she’d stayed up late on her phone.

“Kkuehh…”

Dragging her stiff—actually, now creaking—body, Minji barely managed to crawl out of bed. Ah, seriously, just five more minutes… She wanted to burrow back under the blanket that, while not particularly fluffy, somehow made her feel all warm and cozy when it covered her completely. Just five more minutes—

—Bzzzt—

—but she had to get up. With a single tear welling in the corner of her eye, Minji finally succeeded in parting ways with her bed.

She tossed her pajamas aside and headed straight for the bathroom. If anyone with the surname Jeong who lived nearby had seen her, they would’ve shrieked, “Open a window, you pig!”

“Kkueee…”

Well, since it was just Minji here right now, it was simply pitiful. Her condition was even worse than yesterday. Even while taking the shower she loved so much, her mood refused to improve.

“Cough…! Ow… My nose clears up and now my throat’s acting up.”

The one silver lining was that her blocked nose had finally opened, returning her voice and pronunciation to normal. At this rate, she figured she could use the mic. The coughing… she could just mute during the bad parts.

After finishing her shower and changing clothes—ah, right, Suha always told her to ventilate first thing when she woke up.

Whoosh—

Minji finished her preparations in a flurry of activity. There was just one tiny—actually, not so tiny—problem.

[10:10]

No matter how frantically she rushed, she was already ten minutes late.

“Huh?”

When had time flown by like this…? She was sure she’d woken up at 9:50. What Minji hadn’t accounted for was that her poor condition made showering take far longer than expected. Trying to keep her usual routine despite feeling noticeably worse had led to this situation.

By the way, the late fee had been 100,000 won, and it went up by 50,000 won every five minutes… so even if she left now, it’d be 200,000 won. Of course, Minji’s small, empty brain only spun at full speed when it was for her own benefit.

“Cough… Ah, sorry everyone… My condition got worse than yesterday…”

To avoid paying the fine, she lied with shameless confidence.

Minji remained brazen. She absolutely shouldn’t have been, but she was. I mean, if someone’s sick, being a little late is understandable, right? Ten minutes late should be forgivable.

Fortunately for Minji, Naise’s group was filled with genuinely kind people, so she managed to dodge the late fee without issue. Though Suha, the final gate who knew Minji’s true nature better than anyone, was still there.

She also suffered from the incurable disease of losing all judgment and reasoning whenever it concerned Minji.

“Ah, yeah. I don’t really need to rest that much. I’m feeling a bit better now, so I’ll just turn on the stream and head out right away.”

One way or another, Minji’s perfect crime was succeeding.

Minji herself might have thought differently, but to everyone else, the mere fact that Seongna was participating in the raid attempt felt like a miracle. Her blessed, beautiful voice—usually like a pearl necklace on a pig’s neck—was cracking with constant coughing, losing its luster. The endless sounds of her blowing her nose and sneezing made it clear her cold was still hanging on. The same girl who normally only spouted incomprehensible nonsense or mumbled incoherently was now doing this, so to others, it looked like she was pushing herself too hard.

Well, she actually was pushing herself.

“I’m fine, I’m just going to leave it on. Our viewers understand too.”

What they didn’t know was that if Minji had to choose between the Bolekia raid and streaming, she would pick the former without hesitation. Most streamers would obviously choose the latter, but Minji, who never put much effort into streaming to begin with, had no reason to find it difficult. Her viewers had already reached the peak of Mount Dae-Yu-Kwae and had reached the point where they didn’t care what she did on stream.

So since she was already doing the harder raid attempt anyway, there was no reason not to turn the stream on.

Anyway, that was how Minji began her day-three attempt.

As soon as she turned on the stream, viewers flooded in as if they’d been waiting. It was a meaningful moment where she could feel the surge in popularity from the Bolekia attempts.

Well, even so, this girl’s streaming style hadn’t changed one bit.

In a way, it could be said she hadn’t lost her original spirit. After turning on the stream, logging into Ias, and rejoining the voice channel, Seongna spoke.

“Hi hi.”

“Let’s head out right away~ Let’s try to make some real progress today.”

Having wasted an entire day, they needed meaningful results today. With everyone sharing the same resolve, Naise’s group headed back toward Bolekia once more.

Unlike most groups that got slaughtered right at the start upon entering the third gate, Naise’s group—

Ting— Ting—

—had become so familiar with the opening pattern that they were now talking about late fees for failures.

“Okay, good start.”

“If you die here now, you just pay the fine.”

“We wasted a whole day for nothing, so we have to get past this.”

Even instant-kill patterns could be overcome once you got used to their fixed timing. As for dealing with Bolekia’s basic patterns that dealt near-instant-kill damage with every attack—

“I’ll mark it right away.”

“If it’s hard, I can do it.”

“Later. I’m fine for now.”

Naise’s group already had a certain level of preparation and strategy in place.

Bolekia’s attacks were mostly wide-range and fast-casting, so without a proper system, they’d be stuck just dodging. “This one’s pretty tight. We need more damage.” “The patterns are really nasty..!”

That said, if they failed to deal a certain amount of damage within the time limit, it would trigger an instant-kill pattern—essentially forcing them to play without mistakes.

[......!]

Ting—

Ting—

Using Perfect Guard not only canceled Bolekia’s patterns but also created meaningful damage windows. In other words, Bolekia was a raid where Perfect Guard was even more important than in the previous gates.

However, as if the developers felt the “desperate difficulty” they’d advertised would be meaningless if it ended like this, they had prepared a system to prevent any single overwhelmingly skilled player from carrying everything alone.

“I’m at 7 stacks.”

Every time they guarded Bolekia’s patterns, a debuff stacked, and if it reached 8 stacks, it meant instant death.

“I’ll take the next one.”

Since the debuff lasted over a minute, even if one person handled Perfect Guard full-time, at least two people were needed.

Thus, the strategy Naise’s group chose was: “Seongna handles Perfect Guard as much as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠possible while the others focus only on damage. When Seongna’s debuff stacks reach the limit, Baek Ryong-gak and Eder take turns handling Perfect Guard until the debuff clears.”

“I’m doing this one!”

It was an extremely high-risk strategy with zero stability. Entrusting Perfect Guard to one person meant that if that person made a mistake, the others wouldn’t even have time to react before dying.

“My debuff’s gone. I’ll take it from here.”

However, the reward for successfully pulling off Perfect Guard was too great to ignore. In the end, this strategy was the ace up their sleeve that could draw out 100% of Seongna’s skill.

“Today’s start feels good? We might actually see a clear angle at this rate—”

“Eh?”