Chapter 92

Day 13, 7 o’clock.

The results of Day 12’s battlefield came in.

“One region captured by the Demonic Cult. One region captured by us too. The Unorthodox faction also exchanged one each.”

Both the Demonic Cult and Unorthodox faction had successfully captured one region each.

“A smooth result.”

All three factions had shown an overall focus on defense.

Take this region? Then I’ll take one too. Give me that one back.

It was this kind of limited exchange.

However, looking at the detailed results, the value of the lands exchanged between the Demonic Cult and Orthodox faction wasn’t equal.

The land the Demonic Cult took was at the northern edge—territory that allowed a direct path toward the Orthodox faction’s stronghold, but its value wasn’t high.

Conversely, the land recaptured from the Demonic Cult was territory that simultaneously bordered both the Unorthodox faction and Demonic Cult.

This kind of land had great value.

And territories where all three factions bordered each other had the disadvantage of being easily lost if two factions combined forces to attack.

However, since even successful joint attacks would be claimed by whichever faction contributed more, joint attacks rarely occurred, meaning this disadvantage wasn’t prominently highlighted.

In other words, it was land that was generally well-defended.

Capturing one such region was an advantageous exchange for the Orthodox faction.

[Of Course Orthodox]

-Look at him immediately jumping back into the game

-No business ethics whatsoever

-This is why those Demonic Cult bastards are so— ugh, tsk!

OnlyOneWon checked the chat and examined the red markers on the map.

Unlike yesterday, several red indicators were lit up, but there was only one place to check.

‘So yesterday’s gains weren’t enough to satisfy them.’

They’re really attacking this.

Are they aiming for the stronghold?

Not sure.

It didn’t seem like they’d coordinated with the other Demonic Cult members.

“Still got to defend it.”

As he muttered, a colleague beside him heard and patted his shoulder.

“Right. Let’s defend for now. If Heavenly Demon conquers and advances again this time, there’ll only be one region left before the stronghold.”

Even that much could be considered breathing room, but originally you get devoured by giving up one region at a time.

Look what happened to Britain, giving concessions one by one to Germany right before World War II.

That famous “peace for our time” could repeat itself.

-So who’s going?

A day had passed and they’d prepared sufficiently, so many people were willing to go.

The most discussed topic in No-Honor the previous night had been exactly how to defeat Heavenly Demon 3 vs 1 in territorial battles.

Reading that, OnlyOneWon became even more convinced that the hotfix had been applied in Heavenly Demon’s favor, but anyway, it might not be the case.

Let’s test it.

-I’ll go set up the operation

That wasn’t his chat message.

OnlyOneWon simply didn’t want to fight and battle with Heavenly Demon anymore.

-Let’s go

-Send 4 people and if we get 3 vs 1 matching, let’s adapt to the situation

-OK

You brave souls.

Good luck.

OnlyOneWon shifted his gaze from the chat window to the map with a melancholy expression.

A list of regions with red indicators was added.

The Demonic Cult had four members.

Their nicknames were already up, apparently having reacted quickly.

‘Looks like they had similar thoughts. Three people coming as support and all.’

Of course, Seo-jun probably wasn’t worth a full ranker.

[Heavenly Demon14]

[BanditKing]

[Tangso]

[Monochrome Is Good]

The Orthodox faction also had four.

[Devil Wears Prada]

[Old Master]

[Heavenly Killing Star]

[Backseat Driver]

Heavenly Killing Star—is that guy going for infinite attempts?

Still impressive even after all those losses.

The memory of 12 consecutive victories made his blood boil, but OnlyOneWon shook his head vigorously to cool down.

‘It’ll depend on how the game gets matched.’

He thought about how to respond going forward.

The goal of this battlefield could be summarized in one sentence.

Stop Heavenly Demon.

It was just his personal intuition, but his intuition did very well sometimes.

[Game found. Let’s go crush the Orthodox faction.]

That annoying voice rang out.

* * *

[We won thanks to this one.]

[Don’t talk nonsense, Tangso.]

[Ha. What do you think would have happened without my support.]

OnlyOneWon let out a hollow laugh at their conversation.

Tangso is still the same.

To cut to the results, the matching became 3 vs 2 instead of 3 vs 1.

Only MovieSoft would know the detailed reasons why it wasn’t 4 vs 3, but he could roughly guess.

The balance was quite appropriate.

Ultimately, an appropriate balance where killing Seo-jun even once could make the game much easier to handle.

‘Though I don’t know if that’s actually possible.’

[Of course we won.]

[Why are you saying that so matter-of-factly. This one is the one who created the opportunity for victory for the Demonic Cult right now.]

[Tangso.]

[Why are you calling me.]

[Shut up and let’s get out of the game now.]

So consistent.

Anyway.

If all future matchings were set at 3 vs 2, he concluded that stopping Heavenly Demon through games would be really difficult.

Should he just leave it to his colleagues?

-When it’s 3 vs 2, if we target the stronghold…

-No, rather than doing that, it’s better to…

OnlyOneWon trusted the other rankers who were enthusiastically discussing strategy.

However, he wasn’t the type to just sit back and wait for others to handle things.

Somehow he had to rack his brains and find a method…

“Ah.”

OnlyOneWon’s eyes narrowed and widened repeatedly.

* * *

Seo-jun crack his neck. True to the virtual reality that tried to implement conditions as close to real life as possible, it made a cracking sound and a slight refreshing feeling spread from his neck throughout his body.

After loosening up his hands as well, Seo-jun exited the game.

“Why do the Orthodox faction only probe once and then stop?”

Day 13 had ended.

It wasn’t that the mode closed at 10 o’clock. It just meant there was nothing more he could do today.

-Are you giving up?!

-At this rate it’s going to be the stronghold lol

-They all have their own plans

Seo-jun nodded and looked around, then sat in a nearby chair and leaned his back against the wall.

It was quiet since it was his personal channel.

Moving his eyes to check game messages, group chat rooms, and communities to assess the situation, he spoke softly.

“I guess I should end the stream now.”

He started collecting hooks.

-?

-Why?

-??

-Don’t go

-Another sudden stream end…!

They were right that ending quickly was the right thing to do.

Normally he would have watched videos viewers brought, laughed, chatted, and even argued.

“I have plans with a friend.”

But today there was a reason.

-Lol

-Acting like you don’t have friends, what’s this?

-Suspicious. Smells suspicious—maybe a girlfriend?

-This is possible

-Girlfriend or us, choose one

As expected of masters of slander, they went way too far from the start.

“It’s not like that.”

Seo-jun firmly cut them off and clicked stream end.

Even to keep the 12,000 viewers more engaged, it would be good to stream longer, but there was something more important.

-Bye bye T_T

-See ya

After exiting the capsule, Seo-jun quickly washed up and sat in front of his computer.

Saying he was meeting a friend was a lie.

Where would he have friends to meet?

‘That is a bit sad though.’

Seo-jun reflected on his past life as he searched for the For the Murim official homepage.

He entered the site and opened the battlefield map on the left and a chat room on the right.

[Oh Demonic Cult]

He wanted to accurately understand how users were moving within the battlefield.

Not only would checking during the stream require quite tedious work, he also couldn’t focus completely.

There was a way to watch everything after it ended.

But watching in real time and directly experiencing what psychology drove these decisions was undeniably most effective.

The Demonic Cult’s primary goal was to take down the Orthodox faction’s stronghold.

So all current movements and their intentions were focused on not revealing this objective.

-The Unorthodox faction is attacking us, so we should counterattack appropriately

-The Orthodox faction seems to be planning multiple strikes today

-But aren’t they going to defend their territory?

Shaanxi referred to the region Seo-jun had attempted to conquer today.

It wasn’t that the region was systematically named that way or actually located in the precise location of Shaanxi.

It was just conveniently called Shaanxi since the region divisions were roughly near Shaanxi.

The Gansu that he had conquered yesterday was west of Shaanxi. Moving eastward.

Today’s attack on Shaanxi.

East of that was Shanxi.

Finally, they called the regions Hebei, where the Orthodox faction’s stronghold was located.

-They don’t seem to be defending?

-Maybe they’ll deploy forces when it’s almost over

-This is a bit concerning. Are they just watching to confirm whether we’re actually targeting Shaanxi?

-We probably shouldn’t commit more forces first

When the Orthodox faction appeared to just watch, numerous interpretations flew around.

Since Seo-jun’s purpose was to slowly approach while giving some confusion by operating somewhat separately, he couldn’t openly attack Shaanxi.

“Interesting.”

-Old Master appeared on the Unorthodox faction side

-Nameless also showed up south of Hunan

Collective territory grabbing. Psychological warfare. Or something else.

He could understand why they said this had become stagnant.

“They said For the Murim has sufficient new user influx, right?”

Yet the reason it was called stagnant was probably because after participating in the battlefield once like this, it became difficult for even new users to not know each other.

‘Really interesting.’

Seo-jun’s lips curved up in satisfaction.

Ding.

A personal message came from ThirdElder.

[ThirdElder: Heavenly Demon-nim, great work today as well!]

[Heavenly Demon14: Thank you. But isn’t it not over yet?]

[ThirdElder: That’s true. But the Orthodox faction is being pretty lukewarm.]

Does that mean they’re relaxed?

[Heavenly Demon14: Do you think today’s Shaanxi conquest will fail?]

[ThirdElder: The Orthodox faction is currently conserving personnel, but so are we. If the enemy commits everyone to defending Shaanxi, we’ll show our true colors today too.]

So they’d expose their strategy even at the cost of conquering Shaanxi today?

[Heavenly Demon14: I see.]

[ThirdElder: By the way, Heavenly Demon-nim. It seems like quite a number of users are following your movements.]

[Heavenly Demon14: What do you mean?]

[ThirdElder: Not the people in the chat room, but among regular users—the ones who play the game quite a bit.]

[ThirdElder: It looks like a considerable number of them are moving according to Seo-jun-nim’s actions.]

For users who enjoy the game with some depth, watching streams and communities is absolutely basic.

And a considerable number of Demonic Cult users showed these reactions.

[This battlefield. If you’re a Demonic Cult member who trusts only Heavenly Demon and will follow him lol you know what to do, right? Give me upvotes]

[Heavenly Demon said he’ll eliminate the Orthodox faction. I’m just following that.]

[I don’t doubt it.]

[If I can be even a small help to the greatest of all time’s endeavors, I’m satisfied with just that…]

Seo-jun saw posts like these and laughed them off, but ThirdElder’s thoughts seemed different.

According to ThirdElder, they had lost territory to the Unorthodox faction the previous day that by all calculations shouldn’t have been lost.

The reason would obviously be the absence of regular users, which was common, but this case was quite relaxed, making it a suspicious situation.

The absence of regular users was due to people flocking to Seo-jun.

Since what they needed wasn’t detailed distribution and coordination, this could actually be good news.

‘But will today go smoothly too?’

There’s no way the Orthodox faction would just hand over Shaanxi, a region close to their stronghold, without any response.

-What are they thinking

-They’re only responding defensively to our attacks and not attacking anywhere?

-Seriously weak

At 8:40, when the Demonic Cult rankers who learned the Orthodox faction’s objective all showed panicked reactions.

-The Orthodox faction appeared!

-There are tons of them. They seem determined to deploy all their reserved forces

-Is this why they were waiting!

-Connection dropped

The place where Orthodox faction rankers found matches wasn’t Shaanxi as expected.

Not Shaanxi, but west of it.

Gansu, which the Demonic Cult had conquered the previous day.

Instead of defending Shaanxi, the Orthodox faction’s strategy was to conversely conquer Gansu, isolating tomorrow’s Demonic Cult territory of Shaanxi.