Tutorial Area – 2

“Who’s there!”

As soon as I entered the upper floor, I heard a nervous shout. I stopped. Holding crude wooden planks in their hands, two men, wearing only loincloths just like me, were approaching.

It was exactly as I had seen in the game. Soon, the remaining person loitering behind them would also join.

The two of them, seeing me bare-bodied and wearing only a loincloth just like themselves, narrowed their eyes, then slightly lowered their guard and exchanged words with each other.

“What’s with that guy? Was he in the same situation as us?”

“Since he came from below, that might be the case.”

“Jack said he checked everything earlier?”

“Is it the first or second time that guy has slacked off? He might have just checked roughly and said there was no one.”

“Oh, that fucking idiot, seriously. Jack! Jack! Get out here now!”

I had appeared from the lowest floor of the prison, and even my clothes were just a loincloth, identical to theirs, so it seemed they were mistaking me for a fellow prisoner who had been confined to the lowest floor.

In the game, there were no such lines. They just charged immediately the moment they spotted me.

As the guy on the left nervously called out the name Jack, another person walked out from behind a pillar.

“Why again this time?”

“Why, you dumbass. Didn’t I tell you not to slack off and to check properly? Someone else crawled out from down there, what do you think?”

“What?”

At those words, Jack, whose face was contorted in a frown, looked at me. Then he clicked his tongue, and walked towards me, swinging the crude wooden plank in his hand around with a swish.

“Alright, alright. I just need to deal with him, right?”

‘Wasn’t he mistaken me for a comrade?’

Because the first conversation went like that, I had hoped that if things went well, I might be able to pass without a fight, but seeing that the others showed no sign of stopping him even after he said he would deal with me, it seemed I had been mistaken.

The guy strode forward, closing the distance. If the pattern was exactly as it appeared in the game, it was obvious how the first attack would come. I glanced behind me, and focused on the arm holding the weapon.

His arm was raised.

‘Now.’

Recalling the sensation of pressing a keyboard key to make a character walk backward, I quickly stepped back two paces. As soon as I dodged, the wooden plank cut through the air.

“Huh?”

The guy’s body swayed greatly. Seizing the opportunity, I quickly struck his head with the club. A crisp striking sound, “Thwack!”, was heard. His feet seemed to have tangled from the impact, and with his eyes half-glazed, he was on the verge of falling over on his own.

Anyway, even in the game, it took three hits to kill them. Without giving him a moment to rest, I struck him exactly two more times, and his body, having lost its balance, swayed and then rolled down towards the bottom of the stairs.

A crashing sound, “Kudangtang,” was heard. Since his neck was twisted 180 degrees at the end, there was no need to look further; death was confirmed.

‘It’s a relief that nothing has changed.’

Both the patterns and the situation matched perfectly. If there was any difference, it was perhaps that the game didn’t implement a death animation of rolling down the stairs like that.

Perhaps because of that, even though I had just killed a person, I didn’t feel any particular emotion. Rather than killing a person, the feeling of having dealt with a mob in a game was much stronger.

“This bastard!”

While I was lost in thought, looking at the corpse that had rolled down the stairs and died, the remaining two cursed and charged at me all at once.

I dodged the first incoming attack with a roll, and struck his back. Seizing the moment while the guy who took the full force of the attack was briefly stunned, I rolled on the floor once more and swung my arm. It was a hit again this time.

Towards the guy who was disoriented after taking two consecutive hits in an instant, I swung my arm one last time. As the club struck his head, a much duller sound than before was heard.

The guy collapsed heavily onto the floor, and didn’t move again.

The last one, who witnessed his two comrades die in an instant, charged as if it was all or nothing. Of course, he also took three hits and stretched out on the floor.

‘It’s a bit disappointing that the UI doesn’t pop up.’

The mobs that first appear here still die in three normal attacks, based on the Abandoned One, and even the enemy placement and appearance are the same. The corpses aren’t disappearing, but that’s an irrelevant part.

However, the fact that there was no UI at all was quite disappointing.

That means, not only HP, MP, stamina, and combat fatigue, but also faith that I would gain when allocating stats later, or quick slots for consumables, none of them would be displayed, wouldn’t they?

I didn’t even wish for enemy health bars, but it would have been great if there was a way to accurately grasp at least those things.

Just now, every time I rolled, stamina must have been consumed and combat fatigue must have accumulated, but it was difficult to grasp the specific numbers of how much was consumed and how much accumulated.

For now, rough figures were in my head. The fact that three rolls would deplete stamina based on the Abandoned One’s first playthrough.

‘I’ll have to find out more details later.’

Leaving the prisoners sprawled on the floor behind, I headed towards the door directly opposite the stairs. Behind this door was a prisoner who was the equivalent of a mid-boss in the tutorial area. He was the leader of the guys who had just been knocked out there.

The real boss, of course, was the Human Butcher I first encountered.

He was nothing special. The weapon he held was just a wooden club, and his patterns were extremely simple. I remembered that he could be defeated with about 10 normal attacks.

As I opened the door, I saw the silhouette of a giant human beyond. It was a muscular giant, easily over 2 meters tall.

In his hand was a magnificent steel sword.

“……?”

Huh.

“No, fuck.”

Leaving behind the corpse of the muscular giant whose head had been smashed and killed, I leaned my back against a pillar, slumped down, and let out a hollow laugh.

“This mod is still active?”

It was an incredibly unfair situation.

If this had been a vanilla state with no mods installed, it might have been a little tough only in the very early stages due to my past actions, but once I defeated a couple of bosses, it would have been smooth sailing from then on.

As for vanilla BrDk 4, I was the kind of person who cleared it with no-hit, no-damage runs, performing all sorts of bizarre feats like playing blindfolded, holding the mouse and keyboard backward, playing with my feet, or doing a Level 1 bare-handed run.

But that wasn’t the case.

After realizing that ‘The Darkest Bright’ mod, which was installed right before I was transmigrated into the game, was still applied as is, I was speechless and could only let out a hollow laugh.

I picked up the steel sword that the mid-boss had been wielding and examined it from all angles. No matter how closely I looked, it was a steel sword, not a wooden club. Exactly what appeared in the Darkest Light mod.

‘I’m going crazy, seriously.’

What kind of mod was The Darkest Bright mod? Wasn’t it an incredibly malicious mod that could instantly turn someone like me, with five-digit play hours, back into a newbie?

Of all things, I was transmigrated with that kind of mod applied? It was so absurd that I couldn’t even speak.

‘Just dealing with the Human Butcher right now is a big problem.’

Thinking about the Human Butcher who would appear as soon as I left the lowest floor of the dungeon, I couldn’t help but sigh. My original plan was to beat him.

Although his first appearance showed an immense impact, making players terrified, the patterns themselves were at most six, even with the enemy enhancement mod.

Moreover, all his patterns were slow, making them very easy to dodge with a roll.

He was only called the early-game gatekeeper by newbies who first started BrDk 4, but by the second playthrough, he was someone you could scoff at and defeat easily.

The problem was that in the enemy enhancement mod, merely being grazed by any of the Human Butcher’s patterns meant instant death.

No, it wasn’t just a problem with the Human Butcher. As long as enemies were enhanced with the Darkest Light mod, for all boss-level and mid-boss-level enemies, no matter how much HP you raised, a mere graze meant death.

Paradoxically, that’s why I had to defeat the Human Butcher even more.

‘I absolutely have to get that weapon.’

The reason I was bothering to defeat the Human Butcher was because of the weapon he was guaranteed to drop.

A weapon named ‘Bloody Sword,’ which had performance almost like a cheat code until the early-to-mid game. The difference in difficulty between using it early on and not using it was truly heaven and earth.

Even in vanilla, it was a weapon that made the early-to-mid game very comfortable once obtained, but in the Darkest Light mod, it was virtually a necessity.

Proceeding through the early game without the Bloody Sword was literally an act of suicide.

Whether you have armor or not, whether you max out your HP stat or not, boss attacks are always one-shot kills. You can never withstand more than two hits from even street mobs.

If I’m one-shot by every attack, shouldn’t I at least pick up a good weapon and aim for a one-shot kill for both of us? If I’m one-shot but you take five hits, I’d feel quite unfair.

“…….”

Standing in front of the door leading out of the lowest floor of the dungeon, I fiddled with the doorknob. Just like in the game, the lock was broken, so I could leave whenever I wanted.

In BrDk 4, the moment you exit this door, the Human Butcher, who was roaming nearby, would appear by smashing through a wall at just the right time, then spot the player and chase them.

After engaging in such a chase around the prison, you would barely survive with the help of a certain knight.

Conversely, I could also defeat him right here.

If that happened, you could skip the chase and the subsequent events entirely, meet the knight immediately, and exit the tutorial area, which was a method primarily favored by speedrunners.

Of course, that’s limited to vanilla.

In the BrDk mod, where boss HP increases ridiculously overall, if you were going to do a speedrun, it was right to just shut up and run.

“There’s no choice… is there?”

Right. There was no choice. In the game, I used to skip the Bloody Sword and foolishly retry, beating bosses bare-handed, but now, I had to take everything I could.

I made my decision and opened the door.

-Kuooooooooh!!!!!!

As soon as I went out into the corridor, the roar of the Human Butcher was heard from beyond.