1.

A hidden enemy jumps out after drifting on the water like a corpse.

A suicide soldier charges forward recklessly with a bloated body.

A ranged enemy spits out green liquid from atop a rock, melting the ground below.

‘It’s definitely harder than facing blood demons.’

Breathing is restricted due to the biological gas.

The movement path is limited to breathe.

Especially for her, who was weak in breathing.

【Gold Medal】

[Low Vital Capacity] – Your forced vital capacity (FVC) cannot exceed 3.5L. This is equivalent to the lung capacity of a patient with lung disease.

Once, it was just recklessness.

It’s not even my body; this should be okay.

Such complacency has brought about limitations.

When oxygen runs low, physical capabilities decrease.

Cognitive function also deteriorates rapidly.

With her current body, the longest she can hold her breath is just over 40 seconds.

In the midst of intense movement, that time decreases further.

‘If I’m within a safe range, then it’s 20 seconds. In the worst case, I must never stay in the biological gas for more than 30 seconds.’

The standard method for dealing with blood demons.

This is not much different from when facing blood demons.

A line of demons appears.

Luring them one by one.

Only producing gas that can be detoxified by the anti-poison drink.

[Rotten Fish]

Like catnip for a cat, this is an instant-effect lure.

Demons charge in with their eyes rolled back in frenzy.

As long as there are rotten fish, even if the speed is slow, you can reliably repeat the process of luring and killing.

Rushing into a crowd of demons alone,

Holding your breath while killing all the enemies and escaping,

The method of a massacre is certainly not conventional.

But if it’s possible,

There’s no reason not to do it.

Swordsmanship and movement.

If the two factors that dominated the tutorial field were swordsmanship and movement,

The elements emphasized this time are

Breathing techniques and coordination.

One wrong breath,

One miscalculation in coordination,

The toxicity of biological gas will surely have a negative effect.

– Wow, shit, a suicide soldier appeared!!

– Newbie Crusher on.

– Wait, aren’t all three of those ambush soldiers elite?

– Look at the insane difficulty!

– There are a lot of elite mobs besides the demon ambushers.

– The difficulty is crazy!

 

 

Unlike the blood demons she had directly hunted down, the evil spirits rushed in upon hearing the explosion.

When one died, three more rushed in.

When three died, nine would swarm.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that all the evil spirits on the map were converging in overwhelming numbers.

It was a harshly unfavorable situation, but not every element was hostile to her.

‘This is a good position. Let’s finish this here.’

On a hill with the wind at her back.

Even if she killed an evil spirit, the gas quickly surged in.

It was a golden opportunity with the wind at her back.

Sck! Boom!

A body flails and falls, losing its neck.

Thick gas rises afterward, but the smoke billowing from below the hill quickly dissipates with the favorable wind.

Evil spirits climbing the hill lose their necks and tumble down.

– Wow, it’s an armor soldier!!

– Did the evil spirits have armor soldiers too?

– The official production company said the appearance rate is 0.1%, and it increases every time the difficulty goes up.

An evil spirit protected by sturdy full-body armor.

A foolish sight with no gaps for a single blade to get through.

Players who had played the half-demon song screamed in trauma.

– Kyaaaa!!!

– Evil spirit armor soldier!! Evil spirit armor soldier!!!!

– Not with a sword, not with a spear, not with a hammer, definitely can’t break through.

Isn’t it practically a mid-boss?

– No, haha, why are the higher-ups like that?

– Only those who have experienced it know how annoying the evil spirit armor soldier is.

Ordinary players would flee upon encountering an armored evil spirit.

If they failed to escape, they would lose a life.

All attacks would be blocked by the armor,

And the armored evil spirit would embrace the player,

Forcing them into poisoning or drowning in water.

There was no way to counter it,

As it rushed in with invincible defense for close combat, causing immense damage if caught.

It was no wonder its notoriety was so widespread.

– Huh? The party leader is putting down their sword?

– ?

– What’s this spear looting?

Instead of recklessly swinging a sword or fleeing,

He grabbed the spear of the dead evil spirit and pulled it onto his shoulder.

Paaang!

The spear crossed the battlefield.

From 25 meters away, it struck the armored evil spirit squarely in the head.

The evil spirit armor soldier staggered as if it had suffered a concussion, ultimately losing its balance and falling backward.

Thud, thud, thud!

Other evil spirits were struck by the rolling armored soldier.

Suddenly, five or six evil spirits burst into flames.

 

– Wow, so you can take down the armored soldier with a spear?

– No way, I didn’t know that!

– Players with ten years of experience learning strategies from newbies. Haha!

– With skills like this, even top-tier physical streamers should take notes. Haha!

As she overcame a significant hurdle and caught her breath on the battlefield,

Before she could enjoy the reprieve,

Dust clouds and vibrations began to stir from a distance.

– Wow, it’s like one mountain after another.

– How many are there?

– The evil spirits hiding in the pit are all coming out. Haha!

– All the evil spirits on the map are aggroing!

– Hey, they’re coming from the other side too!

Clever handling had granted her a temporary advantage in short battles,

But was the loud noise the problem?

Over a hundred evil spirits poured out.

On top of that, another misfortune struck.

‘The wind direction has changed.’

The favorable wind became a headwind.

The biogas forming down below was rising up to the hill.

The advantage of the elevation was reversed,

And even from the opposite side, the encirclement was closing in.

It was as if they were facing a crisis, akin to a general stationed atop a mountain.

– Thank you for using the Silent Swordsman mk1 until now.

– Silent Swordsman, how is it that only your head returned?

– This is it; I’m dead.

– Wow, even if I came back to life, this is impossible.

– At least there are fewer coming from the back.

– The 13 men Silent Swordsman don’t know what’s behind them.

Wow, they really charge straight ahead!

– You’re telling me to run right into a hundred drowning corpses? Isn’t that totally a general’s mindset?

In the final charge, which everyone declared to be the end,

The last flicker of a candle burns the brightest before it goes out,

It was like a struggle of a dying flame.

– How many have I taken down so far?

– 27.

– It’s 28.

– No, it’s 29!

– Why does it keep going up? Haha!

Using a wooden plank as a shield, she kicked down the solid defensive stance of the evil spirits,

Pushing a shield soldier into a suicide bomber with the board, causing mutual destruction,

Simultaneously parrying the spears flying in from three directions, she entangled them,

Then drew her sword again to slice through their ankles.

– My feet won’t stop moving.

– I was watching in first-person, but it was so scary that I switched to third-person.

– The spears are flying in, and corpses are exploding from behind, but this person keeps charging forward while looking only ahead.

– I’m feeling dizzy before I can even get scared. Haha!

– The Silent Swordsman’s first-person view isn’t allowed for the lower ranks.

– I’m a veteran of the half-demon song hard mode!

– The Silent Swordsman’s first-person view isn’t allowed even for experts.

– This feedback is quick!

Despite the massive size of the evil spirits,

she stood at a relatively small height of 165 cm.

Using the advantage of her build, she burrowed deeper,

avoiding the evil spirits’ attacks while her relentless assault swept through all directions,

carrying blood blizzards and biogas with her.

‘I need to move faster than the gas spreads, pushing forward without stopping.’

The combined explosions from five evil spirit suicide bombers.

It would take seven seconds to avoid them with a direct frontal breakthrough aided by speed.

The spear bombardment from six evil spirit ranged attackers.

It took fourteen seconds to approach using the shield soldier as a wall.

The group charge from seven evil spirit spear fighters.

It took seventeen seconds to detonate the suicide bombers and annihilate them.

‘This is the worst. The terrain has turned to mud.’

The sheer weight of the heavy evil spirits and the consecutive explosions had flattened the ground completely.

With each step, her ankles sank into the muck,

causing the time taken to break through to stretch longer.

Twenty seconds.

Twenty-five seconds.

Twenty-four seconds.

Twenty-eight seconds.

‘I’m feeling dizzy.’

Her margin for maneuver was shrinking.

Her breathing grew more labored.

Her body was increasingly pushed to its limits.

‘When did the intervals become so tight?’

What once was a wide field of vision before her eyes

had narrowed to a thin line.

‘Honestly, I underestimated them. Thinking of them as mere minions was a significant miscalculation.’

If she had skills, she could have easily dealt with multiple enemies using an area attack.

She could have used movement skills for greater freedom of movement.

She could have quickly escaped from an encircled formation with an escape skill.

Yet here she was, without any skills,

in the highest difficulty mode,

coming this far without any system adjustments was nothing short of a miracle.

She acknowledged it herself.

This time, she had indeed overstepped.

‘I admit it. The minions have become much more challenging compared to the tutorial.’

It wasn’t just a swarm coming at her at once,

but a coordinated assault among similar enemy types.

The synergy effects created by mixing different enemy types.

There were many moments where the increase in difficulty was keenly felt.

Still, with sheer determination, she cut through the evil spirits and finally forged a path.

Before her lay a vast expanse resembling a red river.

Faced with the river after breaking through the enemy lines,

she was now in a state of desperation.

With the wind having died down, pools of biogas collected everywhere.

Navigating through the enemy territory once more and managing to break through to the other side was—

 

She had no confidence left.

‘This is it for me.’

Behind her was the river.

In front of her were the evil spirits.

‘It’s my defeat.’

To the side lay planks of wood wedged against the riverbank, human bones washed ashore, and countless other debris.

‘On the ground.’

Among it all was an old ferry boat that still maintained its form.

Thud—

Splash!

The ferry boat was forcefully pushed toward the riverbank.

Hae Eung Eung jumped onto it, her gaze still filled with determination as she looked toward the land.

‘But what about a battle on the boat?’

Dozens of evil spirits stared at her blankly.

She waved her finger at them.

A bold provocation.

It was as if she had used a large-scale taunt skill,

with the chat log exploding with mad messages.

Following this, the evil spirits, seemingly angry, jumped into the river all at once.

– Are they really going into the river?

– Looks like the Silent Swordsman has never played Pokémon. The evil spirits are all water types; how can they fight in the water?

– Don’t the evil spirits get faster in the water?

– We fought well, even though we lost.

– LTE.

– I lost, but I fought well.

– With a kill count of 86 evil spirits in my first run, without any special items, skills, or bloodlines, that’s legendary enough.

– Thank you for loving the Silent Swordsman MK1 this season. Am I really going to die this time?

A ground battle where she alone took down 86 evil spirits.

Following her massacre-level performance,

the second round of extermination against the evil spirits began.

This time, the stage was not the ground but an old ferry boat.

In a space barely the size of two pyeong,

she began her battle against the evil spirits as they swarmed in the water.

Sixty-four evil spirits remained.

Three thousand three hundred viewers watched.

Among the 64 evil spirits and the 3,300 viewers, no one believed in her survival.

Yet, there was one fact known only to Hae Eung Eung.

Her stance with the sword and the way she stood on the boat had changed significantly.

She closed her eyes and smiled.

‘This sway. The sensation of standing on a boat. It feels so familiar after such a long time.’

Behind the name Silent Swordsman was the player Hae Eung Eung.

She was a swordsman from the Haenam faction, with islands and seas as her front yard.

Naval battles were her strongest suit,

not only against the evil spirits,

but for her as well.

“Kyaah!

“Kyaak!

Unlike on land, the evil spirits raced through the water with fierce speed.

Compared to the evil spirits that moved freely like fish in water, she was on a ferry that swayed with even the slightest wave.

In these conditions,

the evil spirits grew stronger while she became weaker.

Brimming with confidence in the obvious fact that even a monster could recognize,

the evil spirits leaped from the surface, ready to pounce on her.

From that illusion,

from that mistaken judgment,

the second round of extermination against the evil spirits began,

the battle on the boat had commenced.