Chapter 41: The Silent Warrior’s Secrets

-Mixed Blood

Speedmaster couldn’t hold back a sigh.
“Ah, I should be doing that instead.”

• Kkkkk
• You made a bad promise and can’t even touch it, right?
• The Silent Swordsman doesn’t look like he’s dying, huh?
• You won’t finish the Half-Demon Dungeon this year, right?
• You still don’t have a girlfriend, huh?

“Girlfriend? Ban this bastard.”

• Defamation of character, lmao.
• The crime is serious, huh?^^
• Must be heavy being a virgin too, huh? T_T

“Ugh, why are you guys like this today? Did some suicidal mental illness patients infiltrate here? You’re all virgins too!”

• Not true.
• Hit a home run yesterday.
• The home run was the one hit by the last batter in the 9th inning.
• I was in a foreign car with an older guy yesterday.
• You don’t have any older guys. If you think you were in a foreign car with an older guy, immediately get out of that car.
• Kkkkk Kkkkkkkkkkk
• The older guy you know doesn’t have a foreign car. That car was a rental, and your precious part-time earnings have vanished.
• Uh, that’s a bit sad…
• So sad… T_T

New fields and new events.
New quests and new monsters.
Silent Swordsman’s broadcast.
Speedmaster had no problem catching up once it started, but due to his foolish promise,
he couldn’t show off any impressive moves.
Instead, he was mentally exhausted from the self-destructive attacks of the malicious suicidal mental illness patients.
‘I need to play the game to make a mad movie and calm down those troublemakers.’

But he couldn’t ignore the Silent Swordsman’s broadcast, which came only once a month like a monthly event.
‘Talent is talent.’

The path to the Monster King’s palace.
Unlike the Unified Standard Half-Demons, like Blood Demons, Soul Demons, or Reverse Demons,
which appeared in the human fields,
the monsters in the Demon World field were all different.
Their appearances, attack patterns—everything was unique.

• Which field had monsters just popping out randomly?
• Final field.
• Oh, right.
• But they aren’t mummies, right?
  “Then can you guys fight a starving ogre that hasn’t eaten for a week, one-on-one?”
• Kkkk, totally get it.
• A top-tier instructor, haha.

The monsters, with their thin, bony bodies,
were relatively weak, but compared to Blood Demons, Soul Demons, and Reverse Demons,
there’s no doubt they were much stronger.

“Last time, he showed the Bunny Hop, and this time he’s showing some weird aggro management technique.”

• Aggro??
• He’s been using that?
• Now he’s talking about stuff only he knows.
• Can we learn this too, Sensei?
• This is going too fast, Sensei.

“You know what aggro is, right? Aggro, like provocation or threat level. When aggro is high, monsters rush in and use powerful skills.”

• Got it.
  “Usually, if you land a normal hit or trigger a critical hit, or sometimes just by being seen, the aggro level rises.”
• Yeah, yeah.

“But if you don’t land a hit, don’t trigger any crits, and disappear from the monster’s sight, what happens? The aggro that had gone up would drop, right?”

• So?
• We always miss normal hits, but why do we still draw so much aggro and get hit all the time?
  “Yeah, that’s because you’re bad at the game. When you see a mosquito, even if you don’t get bitten, you get really mad and start attracting it. To the monsters, we’re like that mosquito.”
• Kkkk
• Truly a top-tier instructor.
• This explanation is so spot on.
• As expected of Sensei.
• Top-tier instructors really stand out.

Speedmaster explained the concept of aggro, tailoring it to the viewers’ level of understanding.
But the main part of the lesson was about to begin.

“But the Silent Swordsman manages aggro so tightly. Even if something dies next to him, the monsters won’t notice. They won’t even know what’s going on.”

• Huh?
• How can they not know?
• How can they not notice when their allies are dying right next to them?

“Let’s replay that scene for a second, in slow-motion.”
He activated the playback and showed the scene of Silent Swordsman cutting down several monsters at slow speed.
Silent Swordsman slid under the attack of a long-armed monster,
then used a wave-like sword strike to instantly knock off the monster’s arm and stab its neck.

“Look here, when he retrieves the sword, blood starts to flow, but notice how the sword lightly touches the arm’s wound. This is why no blood splattered around him.”

• Wow.
• He calculated all that in that short time?

2.

“That’s amazing.”

“Here, instead of swinging the sword directly at the nearby monster, he slips small pebbles between his fingers and throws them, right? Watch how the monsters’ aggro shifts.”

• All of them turn toward the spot where the pebbles fell.
• The aggro completely disappears.
• The weak spots are exposed at the same time, that’s insane.

“Exactly, weak spot exposure. You guys watch my streams a lot, so your level has improved, huh? This is the perfect opportunity to land a critical hit.”

• If you don’t know, you keep getting teased, huh?
• It’s knowledge that’s been force-fed.
• This is K-style, education by force!

Seeing how the viewers were learning, Speedmaster smirked.

“Well, you guys are still far off. Look at that, you see the bulging blood vessels? It’s only a matter of time before blood spurts out. If you didn’t notice that, you’ve just barely passed the beginner level.”

• Sensei, I never signed up for the intermediate class.
• When did you say just completing the beginner course was enough to be good?
• Why does my learning load keep increasing like I’m at a gym?

“You’ve learned the basics, so now you need to apply that knowledge. Watch closely. There were five weak spots, but he ignored them all and just rammed his attack into the enemy’s back.”

As the staggered monster crashed into another, both monsters were simultaneously stabbed as they slammed into the wall.

When the monsters were backed up against the wall, no blood spurted out, and the nearby monster didn’t gain any aggro. It was a truly clean kill.

Right then, the first monster to fall tilted its body, and the sound of its body hitting the ground was masked by the pounding of Hae Eung Eung’s foot against the floor.

“Here, he uses the corpse to reduce the sound, and while the enemies who raised their guard turn their heads to see who they should give aggro to, one quick strike.”

As the blood gushed out from the severed neck of the first monster, it followed the trajectory of the sword, splashing onto the five remaining eyes of the last monster, causing all of them to close as it lost its sight.

“At first, he controlled the direction of the blood, and now, he used that to block the vision. Then, he split the muscle around the weak spot, broke the guard, and finished it off.”

• How does he think of all this while fighting?
• Waaah, I just want to play with reckless abandon like a newbie.
• This is how it’s done, but I’ll never be able to replicate it.

“Managing aggro is insane, right? In that one fight, there were four instances of aggro management. He made it look so natural, like breathing. It’s better than most experienced hybrid players.”

There was no denying it.

Anyone who watched could clearly see that the Silent Sword Saint had fought brilliantly.

If it weren’t for Speedmaster’s commentary, no one would have recognized just how incredible the battle was.

• Doesn’t this feel like a baseball commentary?
• Haha.
• I thought it was just good, but hearing the explanation makes it even more impressive.

Most viewers either finished in admiration or praised Speedmaster’s sharp observation, but Speedmaster himself was lost in deeper thought.

Could such combat instincts really be called a talent? No matter how he looked at it, these techniques had to come from real-life experience dealing with these kinds of monstrous creatures.

If his assumption was correct, then the Silent Sword Saint was a current awakened one who had gained real-world combat experience facing the monsters from the Gates.

However, to accumulate that kind of experience, it would take at least ten years.

‘I’m not sure about his exact age, but judging from his appearance, he’s probably in his mid-twenties or younger. If he’s accumulated ten years of experience by that age…’

At the very least, he would have started dealing with monsters when he was in his mid-teens.

‘By then, he would have been hunting monsters already.’

If that was the case, it didn’t make sense according to the regulations of the Association.

‘Underage awakened ones are prohibited from engaging in real combat according to the Association’s rules.’

Speedmaster didn’t voice this thought because he knew that, if shared, it would spark immense curiosity among the viewers, but he kept silent.

The reason why he kept quiet was because this theory would lead to a conclusion that was impossible—or worse, should not be possible.

‘Maybe he lied about his age and has been sneaking through the Gate, or he’s from another country where the rules are less strict…’

While gangs like the K-Association would fiercely protect their own turf, foreign countries—especially those with vast territories and frequent monster invasions—were far more likely to put children into real combat, given their dire circumstances.

‘Could it be that he can’t speak Korean because he never lived here?’

In Speedmaster’s imagination, the Silent Sword Saint was like a soldier who had fought in endless wars, rising to prominence by surviving brutal battlefield conditions and ultimately becoming an indispensable part of a country in crisis.

Given how strict Korea’s registration system was for awakened ones, and considering the advanced performance of their scanners, it seemed far more likely that the Silent Sword Saint had originated from a foreign country where such rules were laxer.

3.

Why would an awakened one, who was involved in such intense warfare, be here in Korea, streaming games?

As Speedmaster pondered deeply, his eyes caught the viewers’ chat.

• By the way, I just realized, this girl is really pretty.
• She’s top-star level cute.
• Isn’t it sexy when she runs with one hand on the sword? Straw hat, too.
• When she wipes the blood off her sword and puts it back in the scabbard.
• It’s so sexy when she passes by without even looking at the dead body she just cleaved with those indifferent eyes.
• Her skin’s so white, and she looks like a mixed-race beauty, doesn’t she?
• She looks like she’s got both Western and Eastern blood in her.
• She really does look like a mixed-race beauty.

A mixed-race beauty with both Eastern and Western blood.

Suddenly, Speedmaster remembered the recent news he’d read about the Eastern European Union’s Gate conquest.

[Belarus Gate Expedition Achieves Major Success]
[They’ve reportedly pushed the front line more than 20km]
Will the dream of national recovery be realized?

News from overseas reported a significant victory in a joint operation that tilted the Eastern European front in their favor. Could the Silent Sword Saint be from that region?

“…That’s a really sad story. I should treat her better.”

He suddenly felt ashamed of his past doubts about her, wondering if she was just a malicious streamer avoiding his invitations because of his earlier rude comments.

Next time they collabed, he promised himself he would treat her well. With that resolve, Speedmaster sent a formal collaboration request email to the Silent Sword Saint’s streaming account.

But what he didn’t know was that, much like him, the Silent Sword Saint had already received a flood of other emails—messages asking to be the president of her fan club, chatroom manager applications, YouTube video editor offers, and collaboration proposals from other streamers like Lee Haechan, Lee Dahye, and Eom Gildong.

Her inbox had already reached the maximum capacity for unread emails, +999, long ago.

And so, once again, another email from Speedmaster—unread and unnoticed—was added to her inbox.