Hidden Boss, New Strategy
“Holy shit! That was insane!!”
Excited, Choi Pinam slammed both hands on the desk and shouted at the top of his lungs.
When there wasn’t any angle for a clean shot, he just fired at something else and used the ricochet to bounce the bullet back in? In theory, it wasn’t impossible—but how many people in the world could actually pull that off?
This wasn’t just a matter of being good with a gun. It was a feat that left everyone watching stunned, the kind of skill that could be elevated into art only after countless hours of refinement.
So impressed was he that the words that slipped out were more honest than he’d normally ever let himself be. It was a sensitive topic, so he usually took care with it.
“Did you all see that? Even a pro couldn’t do something like that!”
- Honestly, even among pros, there probably aren’t many who can do that as naturally as breathing.
- lol No matter how good he is, are you really comparing him to a pro?
- It’s impressive, sure, but at the pro level it’s still just, like, he’s decent?
- Come on, unless you’re a top-tier player, even as a pro gamer that doesn’t look easy.
- Hard to say. There are plenty of pros who don’t seem human to begin with.
Professional gamers.
People who made gaming their full-time job.
Out of the hundreds of millions of gamers in the world, they were a tiny handful—people who simply couldn’t survive unless they possessed truly monstrous talent.
Even Choi Pinam, who was confident enough in his own skills to boast of having top-tier physical ability, had once dreamed of becoming a pro gamer himself.
But then.
That place is a real den of monsters. Even if you bust your ass and claw your way forward, there’s no guarantee of a future...
In terms of pure physical ability alone, he figured he could contend with the middle-to-upper ranks even at the pro level.
But beyond that? There were people in that world who made him feel an impassable wall between them and everyone else.
They were beings above the sky itself—monsters who treated his level of physical talent as nothing more than a basic given.
Watching them play had shown him his limits, and he’d abandoned the dream of going pro early.
There was regret, sure, but he’d made the right call quickly and turned his eyes to broadcasting instead. Now he was earning a comfortable living, with nothing to envy in anyone else’s life, so he was satisfied enough.
“A-Anyway, I was getting excited, so take it with a grain of salt. You all know pros have different tiers, right? What I mean is, on average, stuff like that is hard, okay?”
- Hmm. That hard, huh?
- Well, based on everything he’s shown so far, he’d probably pass a pro tryout easily?
- Ugh, the people with fantasies about the pro scene are all overhyping him like crazy. Even if you brought Walnut in here, he’d have trouble doing that much.
- lol WTF, does Mr. Walnut even know you?
- Bringing up Walnut of all people crosses the line.
- Whatever, let’s just watch. You’re about to start fighting over pros again.
- Boss fight’s coming up. Let’s focus.
“Hey, hey! Calm down. I’m just saying I was impressed, but it feels like things are getting a little too heated. We’re seeing rare stuff here, aren’t we? Let’s not waste energy arguing over other things and just enjoy it.”
When Korea talked about the very peak of the gaming world, one of the first names always mentioned was that of a pro gamer in the top five of every list worth caring about, and the chat room was already burning bright with arguments.
Choi Pinam cursed himself for throwing gasoline on the fire with a careless remark, and he hurried to settle the atmosphere down however he could.
Just as he said, the broadcast was approaching its highlight, and though the viewers kept grumbling, one by one they shut their mouths.
“G-get away! Don’t come any closer! Aaaagh—!”
The raider leader, crawling on all fours with a bullet embedded in his leg, was mercilessly chewed apart by the death worm’s teeth and swallowed into its belly.
Then the death worm convulsed wildly, as if in pain, and let out a ghastly shriek.
Ke-kiiit!? Kiiieeek—!
“Huh? Why’s it doing that?”
At Sunhee’s murmur, viewers eager to show off their knowledge rushed to fill the chat.
- Because of the vaccine stuff the leader has.
- The reason the world ended up like this is because of some virus a company was researching, and in the setting, the raider leader stole a vehicle from that research lab and got hold of a vaccine.
- More accurately, it wasn’t even a full vaccine, just one sample among several.
“Ah, so the raider leader’s got something like deworming medicine, and that worm swallowed it and got a stomachache, right?”
- lol Yeah, that’s basically it
- Sort of, but that explanation is so janky lol
- lol anyway, if you get it, you get it~
“So it dies like that?”
Sunhee tilted her head and asked just then.
The death worm curled up into a ball, then began to shrink with a strange, grating sound.
“Huh!? Is it really dying?”
“...I don’t think so. Stay back.”
Wrapping his body in front of his daughter, who had toddled over to his side, Yeongho fixed the boss with a slightly tense stare.
Should this be called killing intent?
Something dangerous was seeping out of the creature’s body.
And then.
Rattle. Crack!
The giant body of the death worm, now coiled into a ring, shrank into one compact mass, and things that looked like human arms burst through the hide all over the place.
Arms multiplied by the thousands, then the tens of thousands, and finally the hundreds of thousands, stretching out into long legs.
“Eeeek! That’s disgusting!”
“Hmm...”
The shape was grotesque, but the form itself was familiar.
An enormous round body with eight legs born from the interweaving of countless human arms.
It looked like a spider.
“Kikekekek! Kiiiieeeek—!”
A mutated boss that appeared only in the hidden route of Chapter 2.
IncreaseHand.
Roughly translated, it meant an expanding hand.
“Sh-Should I shoot it? Dad? I’m shooting!?”
Sunhee, her face gone pale, raised her rifle and aimed at the thing.
Apparently disgust had overtaken her, because before she even got a reply, she fired.
Bang! Ting!
The bullet flew true and struck the monster’s body dead on—but because the death worm’s hard scales still remained beneath the transformed shell, it bounced off uselessly instead of sinking in.
“Eep! I guess bullets don’t work! What do we do, Dad!?”
“Hold on.”
At his daughter’s panicked voice, Yeongho gave a small wave of his hand, as if telling her to calm down.
At the same time, his eyes swept across IncreaseHand’s massive body.
There’s a weakness somewhere.
If this was a game where clearing it was the goal, then no matter how terrifying the monster was, it couldn’t be something you simply couldn’t fight at all.
The moment he resolved to fight the enemy, that same sensation spread through his entire body again.
A strange intuition that made the most effective response feel almost inevitable, guiding his movement into the optimal path.
- You can’t take that thing down with a normal gun lol
- You need grenades or a rocket launcher at minimum to do any real damage.
- Even if you clear the whole level-one or level-two raptor zone, you still won’t have enough firepower. Guns alone just aren’t enough.
“Then how are you supposed to kill it?”
- Run to the abandoned warehouse behind it!
- It’s not the boss fight starts there for no reason~
- There are explosives like gas tanks stacked all over the warehouse. You’ve got to lure it there and blow it up.
- If you don’t take out at least five of its legs in time, they regenerate one by one.
- Hurry up. It’s probably about to finish mutating and attack.
- Break the legs, then use the flammables in the warehouse to set the body on fire for damage!
“Okay, got it! Dad! They say we have to get inside there!”
Having gathered information by talking with the viewers, Sunhee grabbed her father’s arm, which was still standing motionless, and tugged on it.
But Yeongho, now using his concentration to the fullest, did not move an inch. He only stared at the boss with his eyes wide open.
The viewers had already explained the clear method.
I can feel it. There’s definitely... something.
With all his attention locked onto the boss, Yeongho sank deeply into his own senses.
From the eight legs planted on the floor all the way up to the body at the center, he probed every inch of the boss’s shape as though he could feel even a single strand of fur on it. Then, at some point, a glint flashed in his eyes.
“Dad? We have to go now, I said!?”
“...Found it.”
- What’s he doing standing there?
- I told you, there’s no way to fight it in the field.
- If he just stands there like that, he’s basically asking to die.
The boss, having fully mutated from death worm into IncreaseHand, charged at the two of them.
Yeongho extended his hand, sighted down his pistol, and pulled the trigger.
Tap! Thwack!
“Keeeaagh!?”
- I told you, old man, bullets won’t work!
- Those scales are bulletproof~
- You’d need at least a heavy sniper rifle, and he’s using a pistol, lol.
- Huh? Wait, didn’t it look like the bullet didn’t bounce off just now?
- ???? What? Did a pistol punch through the scales?
Tick! Thwack. Tap! Thud!
Every time the little Makarov made its absurdly tiny crack of a shot compared to a rifle, IncreaseHand lurched hard, suffering as bullets buried themselves in its body.
- What the hell??? It looks like he’s actually dealing damage???
- ?????????? Wasn’t this supposed to be a boss you absolutely couldn’t kill with a gun?
- The only known strategy was to lure it into the warehouse, blow up the explosives, and burn it down.
- Something’s... happening, but I have no idea what;;;
Before long, the viewer count had climbed past a thousand, but not a single person watching the stream had correctly grasped what was going on.
The boss had been covered in hard scales, and gunfire had seemed useless against it—but if you looked closely, a few of those scales moved ever so slightly, opening gaps about two finger-widths wide each time they shifted.
Hidden inside those gaps was a breathing hole the size of a ten-won coin, and that tiny opening was the one and only weakness set on IncreaseHand.
Tick! Thwack. Tick! Thud.
“Kiiiit, kiiit!”
After putting a total of five bullets into the boss’s breathing holes, Yeongho sprinted toward the staggering monster.
He had already attacked every weakness he could hit head-on, so now he was moving to target the remaining breathing holes that his angle hadn’t allowed him to reach before.
“D-Dad! I don’t know what’s happening anymore! Dad, fighting! Hang in there!”
She had no idea how things were supposed to be working, but contrary to what the viewers were saying, the boss strategy seemed to be progressing somehow.
So Sunhee, who had been stomping in place with nervous energy, decided to just switch into cheerleader mode.
And then, at last.
Tick! Thwack.
“Kieeeek...”
Once Yeongho had shoved bullets into all twelve breathing holes he found in the boss’s body, the creature let out a pitiful dying scream, and the arms sprouting from its torso dropped away in a sudden rain.
- What!? He actually killed it?
- Stop lying;;; wasn’t this the boss that was supposed to be impossible to kill with bullets?
- Is it just pretending to be dead? No way this is real.
The donation voice from one viewer spoke for everyone watching.