Chapter 99

[This makes no sense]

[He definitely pulled something! There’s no doubt about it!]

[MovieSoft really was pushing the Heavenly Demon! Otherwise it doesn’t make sense!!!!]

[It’s a bug… I saw it happen.]

There are five stages of human emotion in accepting death.

Stage 1: Denial.

The stage where you simply can’t accept the facts.

[The Orthodox faction guys collectively losing their minds is hilarious LOL]

-Currently in Stage 1 reality denial!

-The Heavenly Demon’s room is also in chaos right now LMAO

-The Orthodox faction was killed by you, Seo-jun!

└He actually did kill them LOL

Stage 2 is anger.

[Fuck, this is so infuriating]

==

Why attack the Orthodox faction first? Why attack the Orthodox faction first? Why attack the Orthodox faction first? Why attack the Orthodox faction first?

What did we do wrong? What did we do wrong? What did we do wrong? What did we do wrong?

So fucking annoying

==

-Stage 2 appeared

-Next comes bargaining LOL

-Orthodox faction guys raised like hothouse flowers, this is the taste of the Demonic Cult!

-Will probably be like “Please forgive us just this once, MovieSoft-nim”? Lmao

Stage 3: Bargaining.

[Please just this once… I saw it coming.]

This won’t work.

[What happened when the Demonic Cult got their home base raided last time?]

==

In the end, they got faction buffs, right? That’s how people barely started coming back.

But we got raided too?

So.

How about we gather the rallying power of our prestigious Orthodox faction and shout for buffs once?

==

-Shit LOL That’s how they’re bargaining LMAO

-Have you guys seriously lost your minds? LMAOOO

-That time was a real problem, you guys just got slaughtered lmao

Stage 4: Depression.

[Can we really say the balance is right when we can’t stop one Heavenly Demon…?]

[Won’t be joining the battlefield for a while.]

[It’s really over…]

The final Stage 5: Acceptance was easily resolved thanks to Seo-jun.

[Real-time Heavenly Demon: Declares he’ll make travel companions as quickly as possible since the Orthodox faction might be lonely.]

==

Now the Unorthodox faction. Your turn to get hit, right?

==

-Take it, Heavenly Demon!

-HAHAHA. Right, damn it. I can’t be the only one to die.

-Unorthodox faction, you guys get a taste too lmao

-Since it’s come to this, just let the Demonic Cult win

-He is coming

-All that’s left is charging straight ahead!

* * *

The Demonic Cult and Unorthodox faction inevitably clashed.

Day 17 results.

The Demonic Cult succeeded in their attack.

3 regions remained.

Day 18 results.

The Demonic Cult succeeded in their attack.

2 regions remained.

After the final day 19 ended, the Demonic Cult users had this thought,

[Why are we so strong?]

[At first it was just “let’s catch the Orthodox faction,” but are we really going to win?]

Victory was within reach.

The Unorthodox faction tried desperately to stop them.

[The Heavenly Demon just doesn’t lose the game!]

==

How exactly do you stop this guy? If we could beat him just once, we could probably stop them.

==

It was a credible statement.

Ultimately, if Seo-jun lost just once, they believed they could stop the Demonic Cult’s rising momentum.

The number of users wasn’t precise, but the mainstream opinion was that they were roughly equal.

If one side had significantly more, you’d expect to see AI matchmaking complaints, but no such posts had appeared.

[The Unorthodox faction looks pathetic lol]

[That was our feeling]

[Just push right through!]

And so a post dedicated to Seo-jun, who had never lost even once, was uploaded.

[Sword God]

“What is this really?”

Seo-jun read Lee Geon-yeong’s message and entered No-Honor to check the post.

He’d heard that someone had edited his gameplay into a video.

Seo-jun entered the post and played the video that immediately appeared.

The screen stayed black with silence for about 3 seconds.

Then the sound of clashing swords broke the stillness.

Clang!

Clang clang!

The swords clashed once more.

And again.

The interval between sword clashes gradually quickened with mounting tension.

Whoooosh!

The screen suddenly brightened.

At the same time, the video’s perspective focused on someone.

A sword blocking an enemy’s technique.

It was from the viewpoint of the person wielding that sword.

The scene quickly switched, this time showing an enemy sword approaching.

The viewpoint’s owner casually blocked it.

The background changed again, this time showing someone slashing an enemy’s throat.

Then quickly blocking a sword striking from above, dodging an attack flying from the side, and extending an arm.

Landing gracefully in front of an enemy with clothes fluttering.

From that point, faint club beats and exciting background music gradually grew louder with clearer sound quality.

“Oh.”

What Seo-jun was watching now was a video someone had created by stringing together countless scenes of his battles.

Lee Geon-yeong had watched this video and said he was both jealous that he hadn’t made it first and praised that it was better than his own skills.

It was indeed well-made.

“Huh? Are these scenes in reverse order?”

Thinking about it, the very first scene was from today when he fought 2-on-1 against Unorthodox faction rankers.

What followed was yesterday’s fight.

Two days ago. Three days ago.

“That’s right.”

And now Seo-jun was facing three Orthodox faction rankers alone for the first time.

The music grew tense as if announcing the approaching climax.

Suddenly, through editing, time slowed as Seo-jun turned his body.

To parry Heavenly Killing Star’s sword attacking from behind.

And the moment Seo-jun raised his sword in front of the staggered Heavenly Killing Star thanks to a successful roll.

The screen switched to show Seo-jun from Heavenly Killing Star’s perspective.

Seo-jun’s emotionless eyes enlarged, and as if covering those eyes, Seo-jun’s sword and sword energy descended, splitting the screen in half.

Whooooosh!

The screen went black.

[Sword God Mad Movie]

Text appeared as the video properly began.

Seo-jun started watching with the feeling of reviewing his matches.

Countless 1-on-1 duel battles.

There, Seo-jun’s sword was slow yet fast.

Though it was a video containing only scenes, it expressed this well from the enemy’s perspective.

The decisive moment with Baekho.

Capturing the moment when his spinning sword nearly reached its target before being deflected.

Seo-jun facing Namgung Cheon.

The scene of driving his sword into a wall to climb up and catch Namgung Cheon followed in succession.

His first time playing For the Murim, utilizing berserk state.

And.

Even fighting the Assassins that emerged from the shadows.

After that, defeating all the Rulers.

“The end is Etorne.”

The video concluded with his fight against the Assassin’s Dawn tutorial boss.

The video was uploaded on No-Honor. And it was proudly occupying 1st place in the top 10.

Thanks to its quality and No-Honor being fired up over the battlefield.

And the title of that 1st place post and video was,

Sword God.

His title from his previous life.

Seo-jun awkwardly scratched his cheek.

“How did they know?”

His nickname and role-play concept in For the Murim was Heavenly Demon.

But this person had given Seo-jun the title of Sword God.

With this level of effort put into making the video, they wouldn’t have carelessly chosen the title.

So it meant that in this video editor’s view, Sword God suited Seo-jun better.

“Did they not watch the livestream?”

If they’d watched the livestream, seeing his impudent way of speaking, it would have been hard not to judge ‘Ah, this bastard is definitely Heavenly Demon.’

If they gave him the title Sword God even after watching the livestream.

It was like… he’d been deliberately acting like the Heavenly Demon all this time, but someone was telling him it was no different from who he really was?

Anyway.

“I didn’t expect to hear the title Sword God here.”

It wasn’t too bad.

Was this fate after all?

Seo-jun checked the comments.

The top-rated comment appeared first.

-Heavenly Demon fits him perfectly lol

Huh. This also felt bad.

Right.

Seo-jun accepted the inescapable fate with a nod and checked the next top comment.

It was a reply to the first top comment.

└Sword God fits fucking well too though?

The number of upvotes on both comments was nearly identical, with almost no downvotes.

Meaning both suited him equally well.

The Sword God side’s argument went like this,

└He’s really just the god of swords lol

└Look at the Training Hall. He cleared every game with sword skills

└I’ve never seen the streamer use weapons other than swords

└There’s the pipe, newbie

└Ah lol Pipe killer lmao

And the Heavenly Demon side’s argument was,

└Just thinking about his usual personality, Heavenly Demon fits

└Real lol

└Sword God is too cool. Go with Heavenly Demon!

└One thing’s certain: with that bastard’s personality, joining Orthodox faction is absolutely impossible lmao

└Even if he was born in Orthodox faction, he would’ve joined the Demonic Cult to become Heavenly Demon lmao. Then he’d invade the Central Plains like in the battlefield. In that sense, Heavenly Demon is perfect

He felt bad again.

Clearly the personality that came out in streaming was all fabricated without a single gram of his true feelings.

But somehow he felt bad anyway.

However, seeing people naturally discussing him in the comments of a post that hit #1 on Adventure’s top 10 made him feel somewhat proud.

No matter how much it was thanks to the battlefield and special circumstances, it wouldn’t be easy to naturally have people talking about you in the comments.

Seo-jun was the biggest beneficiary of this battlefield.

He’d imprinted his name on everyone who played For the Murim.

Now.

All he had to do was finish things well.

“Tomorrow.”

It was time to see the end of the 20-day race.

[Ah ah. Call me Sword God]

-Sword-men

-Heavenly-men

-Heavenly Demon!

-Can’t you just be Sword God and join the Orthodox faction?

Seo-jun chuckled and turned off his phone to sleep.

* * *

It was shocking.

From MONSTER, the indie game development company that had been keeping an eye on Seo-jun, his viewer count exceeding 20,000 was utterly shocking.

“New record.”

The meaning was a newly achieved high price.

And Seo-jun had achieved that new record.

“Recent average viewers over 20,000?”

Insane.

Just how many people is he bringing around?

A person who barely scraped into the 10,000 threshold started dueling, began the battlefield in earnest, and started gathering enormous numbers of people.

In other words.

Seo-jun’s value had skyrocketed.

Damn it.

At this point, there was only one thing they could say,

“We should have bought then.”

This was impossible.

After the battlefield ended and the bubble deflated a bit over time, the viewer numbers would naturally return to their original position.

Of course it would be higher than before, but even so, it was currently too high even accounting for the special circumstances.

And by the time the bubble deflated enough for the streamer to be valued at a proper price, the advertisement would already have been aired.

“Fortunately we prepared many other candidates…”

But.

“Don’t you think so? Huh? CEO?”

What is he doing now?

Why is he staring at that skyrocketing streamer’s video like he wants to burn a hole through the monitor?

Why is he typing comments?

The content is, um.

Roughly that the Demonic Cult is invincible?

“CEO?”

“Ah… Yes?”

“What should we do? Go with a different combination?”

“What are you talking about? We absolutely must recruit him. No matter how much money it takes.”

“Yes? That’s at the ceiling price…”

“Buy it! Stocks, whatever, buy it! It’ll work. The Demonic Cult will win!”

What are you saying, CEO?

Are you perhaps Demonic Cult member?

“We’ll also skyrocket like the Demonic Cult, let’s go!”