#39
“……Ha?”
While Ihyeon let out a disbelieving snort, a chain of red mana came flying and coiled itself tightly around his body.
[Come to me, my bride!]
“What, bride? Is that thing out of its mind?”
Clank!
But there wasn't even time to resist. Ihyeon's character got hit with a forced-movement ruling and was dragged up into the air. Then he was dumped into a massive golden birdcage in the corner of the banquet hall.
[System: Party member '0' has been abducted.]
[Warning: If you do not rescue them, the 'Blood Ritual' will begin.]
Locked inside the cage, Ihyeon's expression went cold and hard.
He found it distasteful that a mere scrap of data had dared to 'forcibly move' and 'restrain' him.
“Hey. You gonna let me out or not? Where do you get off putting your hands on me?”
Ihyeon swung his gauntlets inside the cage, but a [Silence] mark popped up over his character's head and the skill wouldn't fire.
Blad approached the front of the cage and, as if appraising Ihyeon's character, reached out to stroke his chin. His gaunt, pale fingers were a hair's breadth from touching Ihyeon's clothes.
[Stay still, my little bird. Soon, an eternal night shall...]
“Little bird? This is unreal. You gonna get lost or what?”
Ihyeon snapped at it in a voice bordering on a threat, but of course Blad, being an NPC, couldn't understand a word.
“Hey, hyung. You gonna just leave this? You gonna leave me as a little bird?”
“It suits you, though. And you're a bird, conveniently enough.”
“I'm not joking.”
For Ihyeon, who charged ahead skipping the story and ignoring the patterns, this dungeon's whole format was too much to stomach.
“If we're gonna stay here, I'd rather log out and come back in. You be the little bird, hyung.”
When it became clear that if Doyeong really wouldn't help, Ihyeon was willing to log out just to put an end to this filthy situation, Doyeong sighed.
“Let me hit it once. So I can see the pattern.”
Doyeong's index finger lightly pressed the left mouse button.
Tok.
On the screen, Doyeong's character swung a sorry-looking rock. There was no space-dominating light effect, no clamorous background sound, all of it thoroughly stripped away. There was only the sound of an old stone grazing the hem of the boss's velvet cloak.
[Damage: 4,423]
It was better than before, but from Ihyeon's standpoint, a man who pulled numbers in the hundreds of millions, it was laughable damage.
But the real problem wasn't that pitiful damage.
“...Ugh!”
Ihyeon's character, trapped inside the cage, suddenly retched and vomited red blood. The edges of the screen flashed red like a warning light.
[System Warning: 'Soul Bond' activated!]
[Damage taken is amplified and transferred to the 'Bride (0)'!]
“Hyung! I'm the one taking the damage!”
“What? It's going to you?”
The moment Doyeong flinched and lifted his hand from the mouse, the corner of Blad's mouth, swirling his wine glass, twisted.
[You foolish little rat... to dare wound my bride.]
Blad hurled the wine glass he was holding to the floor.
Crash!
The instant the red liquid splattered across the floor, a pitch-black shadow erupted from behind his back like an explosion.
[Atone with your death!]
Kiiieeeeek!!
A high-frequency shriek burst out, sharp enough to tear the headset apart. From within Blad's cloak, thousands, tens of thousands of red-eyed bats came pouring out. In the black tide that blanketed the entire screen, every single pixel of the monitor filled with the revolting beat of bat wings.
“Dodge it! Hyung, that's an instant-kill move!”
“What?”
Ihyeon shouted urgently, but this wasn't the kind of thing you could dodge just by trying. Like a homing missile, it charged straight at the player and delivered death, a literal instant-kill pattern.
“Ah...”
With a short sigh from Doyeong, the swarm of bats swallowed his character whole.
Crrrunch.
The horrid sound effect of flesh being torn away rang out in rapid succession.
[HP: 0]
[Party member 'Won' has died.]
[Party member lost, '0' has died.]
[YOU DIED]
The red letters that appeared in the center of the screen bled outward like dripping blood. Soon the screen shifted to grayscale, leaving only a solitary [Retry] button.
For the number-one ranker and a legendary veteran, it was a first wipe both utterly anticlimactic and utterly overwhelming.
[The Mansion Foyer]
At the respawn point where only an eerie wind could be heard, the two characters spawned side by side.
“Hah... insane. This gimmick is seriously nasty.”
Ihyeon, with an irritated hand, pulled off his headset and set it down on the desk. A thud carried over the mic.
It wasn't because he'd died. What bothered him was that a spec worth tens of millions of won had been stopped dead by a single gimmick. I got beaten by this scrap of data?
“Hold on. I'll go check a walkthrough. Someone's bound to have posted one.”
Ihyeon started to bring up a browser window.
To him, time was money, and slamming headfirst into a wall was the most inefficient waste of resources.
“Wait.”
Doyeong's voice bound Ihyeon's hand in place.
“Don't search it. Why would you look?”
“Huh? Hyung, from the look of this thing, it's a puzzle-type boss with finicky conditions. Slamming headfirst into it is a waste of time. And there's only two of us, so it's twice as hard. It's more efficient to go in with someone else's answer key...”
“Why look at the answer key when the problem's this fun?”
Ihyeon paused and shot a sidelong glance at the secondary monitor.
On the cam feed, Doyeong had his eyes wide open, doggedly analyzing the situation. A lollipop he'd stuck in his mouth at some point rolled from left to right with a crunch, crunch.
“Look at that. The chandelier's shadow, it's not a texture. It's an object.”
“So?”
“It sways. On a three-second cycle. And that mirror, the light-reflection angle stabs right into the boss's head. You never worked out the cushion angles playing pool?”
Doyeong's fingers twitched in the air as if calculating something.
“I'll measure the angle. You just stay put.”
It was the dry gaze peculiar to a veteran, one determined to rip out the gimmick the developers had hidden with his own hands.
Ihyeon propped up his chin and stared at Doyeong on the screen.
A fascination he'd never felt even when stock charts were lurching around stirred in him. Everyone around him was the type to hammer at a calculator and weigh nothing but 'profit,' and yet here this man was, seriously racking his brains just to take down a scrap of data.
Inefficient. A waste of time.
But it's fun, though. The corner of Ihyeon's mouth lifted. Watching this man struggle and groan was a far better deal than clearing it in one minute off an answer key.
He got curious about how that cocky look would change if the man succeeded, or how it would crumple if he failed.
Ihyeon took his hand off the mouse and settled deep into the back of his chair. The posture of a leisurely spectator.
“All right. I'll give you a shot.”
“What's that supposed to mean. I'm the one clearing it for you.”
“But there's a condition. Exactly thirty minutes. That's as far as my patience goes.”
Ihyeon took off his lightly tinted glasses and tossed them onto the desk. The sound of the temple arm knocking against the wood rang out sharply.
“If you can't prove it within thirty minutes, then we do it my way. You ride the bus quietly, got it? No backtalk.”
“Thirty minutes? That's way too generous. Go eat a bowl of ramen or something while you're at it.”
Doyeong crunched the candy in his mouth to pieces and readjusted his grip on the floating stone.
“Just get ready. Don't space out and drop your damage.”
Click, click.
The sound of Doyeong's mouse clicks rang out crisply.
[Attempt 2]
Back to the boss room.
The moment the heavy doors opened, Blad's oily line kicked off once again.
[Come to me, my bride!]
Clank!
As expected, the red chain bound Ihyeon up, and the six-winged bird was once again locked inside the golden cage.
“Ihyeon. Stay still. Just breathe.”
“I trust you. Just hurry up and get me out. The view in here is stifling.”
Ihyeon took his hands off the keyboard and folded his arms.
Doyeong's character began to move. Instead of charging at the boss, he started running toward the edge of the map, over by the window.
Tadadadak.
Kicking up a cloud of dust, the hem of his robe fluttered. Doyeong came to a stop in front of the thick velvet curtain that blocked the window.
[Where do you think you're running, coward!]
Blad raised his staff toward Doyeong's back. At the tip of the staff, crimson mana began to condense.
Wooooong!
The sound of space itself vibrating rang out. A homing missile. A powerful magic orb that meant instant death, or a near-death state, if it hit.
But Doyeong didn't dodge.
“Hyung! Dodge it!”
Ihyeon shouted before he could stop himself, but Doyeong was immovable.
Doyeong's gaze was fixed not on the boss, but on the 'trajectory' of the magic orb the boss was firing.
Just a little more... just a little more...
Doyeong rolled the mouse wheel to fine-tune his viewpoint.
The instant he found the exact angle where the incoming line of the magic orb, his own character, and the curtain behind him all fell into a single straight line.
Shwooook.
The red orb came flying, tearing through the air. Red light welled up to fill the whole screen.
Now.
“Hup!”
Tak!
Doyeong's index finger slammed the dodge key.
At the same time, he wrenched the mouse ninety degrees to the right.
Zero point one seconds.
In an instant an ordinary player couldn't even react to, Doyeong's character, Won, flung himself sideways in a sliding motion, leaving nothing but an afterimage.
Kwaaang!!!
With a tremendous explosion, the screen shook.
Blad's mana bolt passed through the spot where Doyeong had been standing and struck the 'thick curtain' behind him dead-on.
Ziiiik! Chaaaak!
The tough velvet cloth was caught up in the blast and torn to shreds.
And through that torn gap.
Paaaa.
The cold silver moonlight from outside the window, so vivid and sharp, came pouring in.
