Chapter 4

Action-adventure open-world stealth franchise game, Assassin’s Dawn.

This game surpassed 2 million viewers on its opening day and has continued to generate buzz on Travel for the week since its release.

Particularly this series, Shadows in the City, drew praise from day one for its different level of freedom and urban assassination-focused gameplay compared to previous installments.

People began calling it Assassin’s Dawn-Breath of the City, or simply ‘Breath of the City,’ comparing it to what had previously been the most perfect open-world game.

“I heard you can assassinate in any way you want.”

When assassinating, targets die in one hit no matter how high up they are.

However, players had to personally investigate and choose everything from the assassination target itself to the target’s daily routine, assassination location, infiltration method, assassination tools, and even escape routes.

This high degree of freedom enabled all sorts of extraordinary assassination gameplay methods, becoming the reason the excitement never died down.

That’s why even a week later, it was boasting over 800,000 viewers.

[Download of <Assassin’s Dawn-Shadows in the City> complete.]

Just as the notification chimed, Seo-jun pressed the broadcast start button.

[Newbie doing first broadcast and first VR game with Breath of the City. Anyone want to give advice?]

This was the broadcast title Tae-woo had set.

‘Well, VR games aren’t exactly my first time.’

He said veterans and hardcore gamers can’t resist this kind of title, so gathering people this way should come first, which is why he wrote it.

It wasn’t particularly trustworthy.

When a message appeared saying the broadcast would start in 5 seconds, Seo-jun looked away from the broadcast window and pressed the game start button.

In an instant, the lobby was swallowed by shadows and European-style buildings from the modern era began sprouting up like bamboo shoots after rain in the empty dark space.

* * *

The starting point was a back alley.

‘Is this auto-progression?’

Seo-jun’s body was doing parkour on its own.

He passed through foul-smelling streets, climbed over walls, and scaled upward using window ledges.

Clatter.

“Who’s there!”

He crossed using a clothesline and accidentally knocked over a flowerpot placed on a balcony.

But Seo-jun’s body just ignored it and climbed up by hanging from a flagpole that a household had hung up.

After reaching the rooftop, he began running somewhere while jumping between buildings.

As the atmosphere gradually brightened and he entered what seemed like a pleasure district, the surroundings became much brighter and noise could be heard.

Hahaha.

Hohoho.

Reminiscent of the Belle Époque era, ladies in splendid yet practical dresses and dandily dressed gentlemen occasionally flashed into view between buildings.

And at some point in front of him stood a clock tower, rising alone amidst the cityscape.

Seo-jun began climbing the clock tower’s exterior wall without hesitation.

‘If I stay relaxed and don’t resist, it feels like I’m moving myself.’

However, when he tried to exert force and move freely, only then did he realize he had no control.

He repeatedly climbed like a climber launching his body upward on a difficult course.

But when he neared the top, there were no more handholds visible on the exterior wall.

Whoosh.

He felt his chest drop sequentially due to gravity, and as his body was pulled toward the ground, the world began to spin.

Even while falling, Seo-jun waited quietly with his strength relaxed.

Then his body automatically performed a somersault in midair while extending his right arm at an incredible timing to fire a wire.

Click.

The hook caught at the top.

Zing!

With the sound of the wire reeling in, Seo-jun leaned on the line and ran up the clock tower’s exterior wall like he was running to reach the top.

Dong dong dong!

The clock tower chimed right on time, and crows startled by the sound took flight with fluttering sounds.

Riding the cool night air hitting him head-on, laughter from the pleasure district he’d just passed through and the sound of string instruments drifted over.

All the discord within the night scenery harmonized together, giving the feeling of announcing the game’s beginning.

As if showing him, ‘This is the kind of city you’ll be playing in from now on.’

‘Nice presentation.’

After taking a moment to look at the scenery like that.

“Listen, Dane. This mission could get you killed.”

A beautiful soprano voice was heard.

His body turned toward where the sound came from, and a hooded woman walked out from the darkness behind him.

Her blonde hair peeked out from under the hood, fluttering.

“Heh. Christina. When has it ever not been dangerous?”

Seo-jun’s mouth opened.

But his voice was different from Seo-jun’s own. Probably the character Dane’s voice.

“That’s…”

“If you’re going to kill someone, you have to be prepared to die.”

“Right, fine. But be careful. They might have caught on.”

“Don’t worry and go wait at the tavern.”

Christina nodded, saying she understood, then handed over a note and quietly muttered.

“There is no truth. Doubt endlessly.”

Seo-jun replied.

“Even chaos.”

Then he fired a wire to hook onto a nearby rooftop and began sliding down the line like a zipline.

And when he was almost down, he let go to land on a streetlamp, then jumped down again to touch down on the ground.

The moment Seo-jun’s feet touched the ground, he felt strength spread through his entire body.

“Ah, ah.”

Is the tutorial over?

His speech came out properly and his hands and feet moved.

Ding!

[Tutorial Quest – Assassination Mission]

[Etor is a middle manager of a secret society that supplies street orphans to cults and magic towers, as well as a high-ranking noble.

The Assassins has given their member Dane the mission to assassinate Etor.

Quest Clear Condition: Etor’s death]

A notification sound was heard and the game system window appeared.

And the route to Etor’s mansion and Etor’s location were displayed on the map.

“So I need to assassinate him. First, I need to go there.”

Seo-jun was new to games except for MOBA genres, but he roughly understood what he needed to do.

He headed straight toward where the blue marker was pointing.

When the path was blocked midway, an alarm appeared.

[Climb up using the pipe.]

When he grabbed the pipe and applied slight force, he felt something similar to when Dane moved his body.

“So this is how assistance kicks in.”

However, when he completely relaxed his strength, he slid down.

[Try jumping.]

It was telling him to jump between buildings, but he became curious about what would happen if he jumped wrong.

He fell straight down between the buildings.

He felt mild pain throughout his body.

[Try using the rope to cross.]

Even hanging from the rope didn’t require much strength, so he tried staying suspended.

After holding on for a while, he gradually felt his strength draining.

He fell to the ground once more.

As he was enjoying this unfamiliar experience, Seo-jun finally remembered a fact he’d forgotten.

‘I’m broadcasting, aren’t I?’

Still, not much time had passed, so how many people could there be…

[4 viewers]

He was surprised by this unexpected number.

He’d heard that normally even broadcasting all day might not get a single person, so was it because he chose the game well, or was it thanks to the title?

Wondering, he opened the chat window.

-This level is legit newbie lol

-Ah lol this is why I watch newbie broadcasts

-If this is acting, he deserves at least a Nobel Prize lol

Oh.

The viewers were talking among themselves.

Thinking that they’d seen everything that just happened made him feel somewhat embarrassed.

“Sorry. I just saw the chat now.”

-haha

-It’s fine. Watching a newbie run around amazed was pretty entertaining too lol

Three out of the four viewers were talking.

[White Horse Bullet User]

[Best Defense is Winter Yellowtail Defense]

[Public Toilet Brick Theft King]

‘What usernames.’

They were funny but also dizzying.

Are these kinds of usernames trendy here?

Seo-jun put such thoughts aside and first recalled Tae-woo’s advice.

‘If there aren’t many people, don’t obsess over viewer count and practice filling the audio. If there are people, communicate comfortably within limits that don’t break the broadcast flow.’

The reason people come to broadcasts without many viewers is usually because it’s easy to communicate.

The chat windows of major streamers called “big corporations” flash by so quickly that messages easily get buried.

Seo-jun tried light conversation while heading to his target point.

-Is the streamer really a newbie?

“Yes, that’s right.”

-Ah lol I checked the streamer’s record and it was clean. Creation date was 2 days ago too.

“You can check that too?”

-Yeah

-You should switch to private.

“That’s bothersome.”

Seo-jun didn’t feel the need to turn it off.

-Then why did you bother turning on broadcasting?

-For real lol

‘Everyone’s chatting actively which is good, but is this okay?’

He felt the need to check out other broadcasts’ chats.

“Hmm, I arrived quickly. What should I do now?”

-Open the note

-If you open the note you can see three-dimensional information about the mansion

-Since it’s tutorial it gives you most information and assassination routes, just follow it

Surprisingly, they gave proper answers to questions like this.

Seo-jun opened the note as they said, and the blueprint system activated, spreading a 3D screen in front of him like something from a movie.

That screen could zoom in and out of a point, rotate angles, and even modify the map – everything was possible.

Moreover, not only the structure of the grand mansion and secret passages and enemy positions were displayed, but even detailed infiltration routes to where Etor was located.

Etor’s location was the 2nd floor bedroom that could be called the deepest part of the mansion.

“There are twenty enemies. The weapons in inventory are… Assassins exclusive gauntlets and a sword stick?”

A sword stick was an assassination and self-defense weapon made by turning the inside of a cane into a scabbard and hiding a thin sword inside that could be drawn and used in emergencies.

And the cane itself could also be used to strike enemies with blades shallowly embedded in it. The tip was sharp like a sword point.

The gauntlets had an assassination blade that popped out from the back of the hand and a wire launcher embedded in the wrist.

“Are the weapons tutorial default settings? Anyway, I just need to kill Etor, right?”

-Yes

-Yes

-Yeah

Should I try it?

Seo-jun took the sword stick and walked straight to the front gate.

But immediately opposing chats appeared.

-No, just follow the note exactly

-Leave him be, other guys also went to the front gate, died, then naturally climbed walls.

-Here comes another victim

“Why? Can’t I go through the front gate?”

-No interference. Streamer is baby. Must observe

-You can. Yeah quickly open the front gate and go in

-Those guys are easy. They die in one hit

The attitude switch was professional level.

“Hmm, seems like I shouldn’t go through the front gate.”

-Ah the streamer caught on, you guys

-The victim stopped going

Seo-jun was puzzled by these viewers’ reactions.

“But I heard you can do anything in this game. Why can’t I go through the front gate?”

-You can though, though?

-Go go

-Lol stop bullying the newbie you guys

Unable to stand it anymore, a viewer who had been quietly watching spoke up.

-Usually instead of sneaking in to kill, going in openly and killing all enemies is called musou play or hack-and-slash gameplay…

That viewer’s explanation was as follows,

When performing missions in this game, targets die in one hit no matter how high up they are, but if you’re discovered, you have to engage in hardcore melee combat one against many with NPCs who have several times more HP than the player, so people usually try their best not to get caught.

But some veterans would ignore assassination plans completely and charge in through the front gate openly.

The so-called hack-and-slash gameplay.

Hack-and-slash gameplay had much higher difficulty than normal assassination play, even without the information gathering process.

This latest Shadows in the City received praise for naturally guiding people toward assassination play through this difficulty adjustment while maintaining freedom.

“So it’s impossible to clear the tutorial with that hack-and-slash gameplay?”

-Don’t know. No one’s cleared it yet.

-Streamers figure it’s more profitable to play other things rather than waste time on that lol

-Someone challenged it for 10 hours, gave up, then said they’d clear it after seeing the first playthrough ending

-Even community veterans haven’t posted news about it

“So it’s not impossible?”

Seo-jun focused only on this point.

-Yeah probably possible if you have Shin Ha-yeon level control

-Theoretically if you dodge all of Etor’s attacks within the time limit and all your attacks hit vital points

-Super easy lol isn’t beating Shin Ha-yeon something anyone can do?

“Shin Ha-yeon? Well then, let me try it. Whatever.”

Seo-jun spoke confidently.

Anyway, even if it was an AI, a win is a win, right?

-????

-Do you even know who Shin Ha-yeon is?

-Catch the guy who chatted above that anyone can beat Shin Ha-yeon lol

Seo-jun walked straight to the front gate.

-The victim is really going

-Ah. Newbie… do you really have to taste whether it’s shit or soybean paste to know?

-5 minutes later streamer (crawling on ground): This way they won’t catch me, right? lol

-Lmao