Chapter 2: Tutorial (2)

“Who goes there!”

The moment I stepped onto the upper floor, an irritable shout echoed. I stopped. Two men, just like me, wearing nothing but crude loin clothes and brandishing rough wooden clubs, were approaching.

They looked exactly as they did in the game. The third one who was idly wandering in the background was about to join them as well.

Upon seeing me, a man wearing nothing but a loincloth like them, they squinted their eyes in suspicion, briefly dropped their guard, and started to converse amongst themselves.

“Who’s that bloke? Was he trapped in the same situation as us?”

“He came from below, could be.”

“Didn’t Jack check thoroughly earlier?”

“That guy’s always messing up. Probably did a half-assed check and assumed it was all clear.”

“Damn that idiot. Jack! Jack! Get out here now!”

Given that I had appeared from the lowest level of the prison and was wearing the same single piece of cloth as them, they seemed to be mistaking me for a fellow prisoner.

There was no such dialogue in the game. As soon as they spotted you, they would charge straight at you.

When the man on the left started calling for someone named Jack irritably, another figure emerged from behind a pillar.

“What is it this time?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’? You fool. I told you to check properly, didn’t I? Someone else has crawled up from below. What do you make of that?”

“What?”

At that, a disgruntled Jack glanced at me. Then, with a huff, he started swinging his crude wooden club and walked towards me.

“Alright, alright. I’ll handle it, alright?”

‘Weren’t they mistaking me for an ally?’

From the initial conversation, I thought if I played my cards right, I could avoid a fight. But seeing the man who said he would ‘handle’ me, and the others not trying to stop him, I seemed to be mistaken.

The guy began to close the distance. If the pattern was the same as in the game, I knew exactly how the first strike would come. I glanced over my shoulder and focused on the arm wielding the weapon.

His arm rose.

‘Now.’

With the sensation of pushing a key to make the character move back in mind, I quickly stepped back two paces. As I evaded, the club swiped through empty air.

“Huh?”

The man staggered. Seizing the opportunity, I quickly struck his head with my cudgel. A pleasing sound of impact echoed. His feet tangled from the shock, he was on the brink of collapsing.

In the game, it took three hits to kill. Without giving him a chance to recover, I struck him two more times. The off-balanced body swayed before tumbling down the stairs.

Thud, the sound echoed. Given his neck had twisted 180 degrees by the end, there was no need to check – it was certain death.

‘Good thing nothing’s changed.’

The pattern, the situation, everything matched. The only difference being, the game never had a death animation of someone tumbling down the stairs and dying.

Perhaps because of this, I felt no particular emotion after killing a man. It felt more like I had just taken out a common monster in a game.

“Damn you!”

While I was lost in thought, staring at the dead body that had fallen beneath the stairs, the other two cursed and lunged at me at once.

I dodged the first attack with a roll and counterattacked. The guy who took the direct hit stiffened for a moment, and I rolled once more, swinging my arm. Another hit.

In the blink of an eye, I landed two consecutive blows, leaving him disoriented. I swung my arm for the final blow. The sound when my club hit his head was much heavier than before.

He collapsed onto the floor and didn’t move again.

Witnessing their companions die so quickly, the last one rushed at me in a fit of desperation. Of course, he ended up the same, taking three hits and falling flat on the floor.

‘It’s a pity that there’s no UI.’

The minor enemies that appear here die with about three normal hits from the perspective of a castaway, and their placements and appearances are the same. The bodies aren’t disappearing, but that’s not an issue.

But it was rather disappointing that there was no UI at all.

This meant that things like health, mana, stamina, battle fatigue, and even the faith and quick slots for consumables that I’d gain when leveling stats would not be displayed.

While I didn’t expect to see the enemies’ health bars, it would have been nice if there was a way to accurately gauge those things.

Every time I rolled just now, stamina would have been consumed and battle fatigue would have accumulated, but it was difficult to ascertain the specific amounts.

At least I had a rough estimate in my head. I knew that based on my initial playthrough of the Forsaken class, my stamina would be depleted after three rolls.

‘I’ll have to find out more about this later.’

Leaving the downed convicts behind, I headed for the door at the opposite end of the staircase. Behind this door was a prisoner, equivalent to a mid-boss of the tutorial area. He was the leader of those who had fallen there.

He was nothing special. His weapon was just a wooden club, and his pattern was extremely simple. I remember it taking about ten normal hits to take him down.

Of course, the real boss was the Butcher of Humanity I had encountered first.

Upon opening the door, I saw the silhouette of a massive man beyond it. He was a muscular brute over two meters tall.

In his hand was a spectacular steel sword.

“…?”

What?

“Oh, damn it.”

I slumped against a column, a hollow laugh escaping my lips, with the muscular brute’s corpse behind me, his head crushed to death.

“Are the mods still in effect?”

It was outrageously unfair.

If this were a vanilla version of the game, without any mods, the early game would have been a bit challenging due to my class, but after defeating just a couple of bosses, the rest of the game would have been a breeze.

I was the one who had thrived in the world of Brightest Darkness 4, mastering every bizarre challenge from blindfolded playthroughs, reverse mouse and keyboard runs, foot-controlled exploits, to barehanded Level 1 runs, clearing each with zero hits and zero damage.

But this… this was different.

A realization stopped me cold in my tracks. The ‘The Darkest Light’ mod that I had installed just before being transported into the game was still active. My mouth went dry, and I couldn’t help but chuckle bitterly.

I picked up the steel sword that a mid-boss had been brandishing, examining it closely. No matter how much I looked at it, it was undoubtedly a steel sword, not a wooden club. The exact same sword from the mod.

“This is crazy, really.”

The The Darkest Light mod was notoriously brutal, it had the power to reduce a veteran player with five-digit play hours to a total newbie.

And I had been transported into the game with that wretched mod enabled? It was so absurd, I couldn’t find the words.

‘Killing the Human Butcher first is the real issue.’

A sigh escaped my lips as I thought about the Human Butcher that would appear as soon as I escaped the deepest dungeon level. My original plan was to take him down.

He had a hell of an impact on his first appearance, intimidating enough to make players quiver in fear. But his pattern was quite simple. Even with the enemy enhancement mod, he had at most six types of attacks.

Moreover, all his attack patterns were slow, making them relatively easy to avoid with a roll.

New players upon their first time playing, might dread this initial challenge. But by the second round, they’d sneer and easily overpower him.

The problem was, with the enemy enhancement mod on, even a brush against the Human Butcher’s attacks resulted in immediate death.

No, this wasn’t just about the Human Butcher. With the enhancement mod enabled, all boss and mid-boss level enemies could kill you with a mere graze, regardless of how much you boosted your health.

Ironically, that made it even more crucial to defeat the Human Butcher.

“I must obtain that weapon.”

My insistence on taking down the Human Butcher was due to a certain weapon he was guaranteed to drop.

A weapon named ‘Bloodstained Sword,’ which was virtually equivalent to a cheat key up until the mid-game. The difficulty difference between using this weapon early on was like night and day.

Even in the vanilla game, once you obtained it, the early to mid-game became considerably more fun. But in The Darkest Light mod, it was practically a necessity.

Attempting to proceed through the early game without the Bloodstained Sword was like committing suicide.

If every attack against me was a one-hit kill, shouldn’t I at least have a good weapon so I could aim for a one-hit kill too? It would be quite unfair if I go down in one hit, and they can take five.

“……”

I stood in front of the door leading out of the lowest level of the underground dungeon, toying with the door handle. As in the game, the lock was broken, so I could leave whenever I wanted.

Upon exiting the dungeon, a wandering Human Butcher that was patrolling nearby would opportunistically smash through the wall, find the player, and pursue them.

Thus would begin a frenzied chase around the prison, where the player would just manage to survive with the aid of a certain knight.

There was also the choice to stand your ground and fight the Butcher straight away.

Doing so would allow you to skip the chase sequence and subsequent events, directly meet the knight, and leave the tutorial area, making it a preferred method among speedrunners.

But, of course, this was only possible in Vanilla mode.

In the The Darkest Light mode, where the bosses’ health bars increased to an absurd degree, the correct approach for speedrunning would be to run away without hesitation.

“There’s…no other choice.”

Yes. There was no other choice. In the game, one could skip the Bloodstained Sword and, foolishly charging forth, go around beating bosses barehanded, but now, I had to grab anything and everything that might be useful.

Having made up my mind, I opened the door.

— Kuoaaahhh!!!

The moment I stepped into the corridor, a roar from the Human Butcher echoed from the distance.