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The action-adventure open-world stealth franchise game, Dawn of the Assassin Guild.
This game surpassed 2 million viewers on its first day of opening and was still driving a topic of conversation on Travel even now, a week later.
In particular, this series, Shadows in the City, drew favorable reviews from people from the first day with its high degree of freedom, which was different from before, and its playstyle centered on urban assassination.
Comparing it to the most perfect open-world game of the past, people began to call it Dawn of the Assassin Guild: Breath of the City, hereinafter referred to as BotC.
‘I heard that any method of assassination works.’
When assassinating, the target dies in a single blow, no matter how high of a position they are in.
Instead, starting from the assassination target, the player had to grasp and choose everything themselves, including the target's daily routine, investigation, assassination location, entry method, assassination tools, and even the escape route.
This high degree of freedom made all kinds of bizarre and extraordinary assassination plays possible, becoming the reason why the fever did not cool down.
Therefore, even now, a week later, it showed the spirit of exceeding 800,000 viewers.
[The download of has been completed.]
At the same time the notification rang, Seo-jun pressed the broadcast start button.
[A newbie doing both broadcasting and virtual reality gaming for the first time with BotC. Anyone to give advice?]
It was the broadcast title Tae-woo had decided on.
‘Though it is not my first time playing a virtual reality game.’
He wrote it down because Tae-woo said that hardcore veterans who explore the deep sea or god-game fanatics would not be able to resist such a title, and that gathering people like this first was the priority.
It was not particularly trustworthy.
When a message stating that the broadcast would start in 5 seconds popped up, Seo-jun took his eyes off the broadcast window and pressed the game start button.
In an instant, the lobby was submerged into shadows, and modern European-style buildings began to spring up like mushrooms after rain in the empty, dark space.
<><><>
The starting point was a back alley.
‘Is it auto-progression?’
Seo-jun's body was doing parkour on its own.
He climbed over a wall and went up by riding on a window railing, passing through the foul-smelling street.
Clatter.
“Who is it?”
Crossing over by riding on a clothesline, he stepped on a flowerpot placed on a balcony and accidentally knocked it over.
However, Seo-jun's body simply ignored it and climbed up while hanging onto a flagpole that a private house had put up.
After reaching the rooftop, he began to run somewhere while jumping over buildings.
As the atmosphere gradually brightened and he entered a place like an entertainment district, the surroundings brightened up completely, and noise drifted in.
Hahaha.
Hohoho.
As if reminiscent of the Belle Époque era, ladies wearing splendid yet practical dresses and dapperly dressed gentlemen occasionally caught his eye between the buildings.
And at some point, in front of him, there was a clock tower towering alone in the city center.
Seo-jun began to climb the outer wall of the clock tower without hesitation.
‘Since I am holding still and relaxing my strength, it feels like I am moving directly.’
However, when he tried to exert strength and move as he pleased, only then did he realize that he had no control.
He repeated climbing like a climber flinging his body upward on a difficult course.
Then, by the time he reached near the top, no more parts to grab were visible on the outer wall.
Whoosh.
Sequentially, he felt his heart sink due to gravity, and as his body was drawn to the ground, the world began to spin.
Even while falling like that, Seo-jun waited quietly while relaxing his strength.
Then, even while his body was doing a somersault in the air on its own, it stretched out its right arm at an exquisite timing and shot out a wire.
Click.
The hook caught on the top.
Whirrrrr!
Along with the sound of the wire winding, Seo-jun leaned on the rope and climbed up as if running on the outer wall of the clock tower, reaching the top.
Dong! Dong! Dong!
Just in time, the clock tower rang, and crows, startled by the sound, fluttered and flew up.
Riding on the cool night air that he received head-on, the laughter of the entertainment district he had passed by a moment ago and the sound of string instruments drifted in.
It felt like all the discord in the night view harmonized together, announcing the start of the game.
As if showing that the city he would play in from now on was this kind of place.
‘The directing is good.’
Having taken some time to look at the scenery like that.
“Hey, Dane. This mission, you could die.”
A beautiful, fine voice was heard.
His body turned its head toward the sound, and a woman wearing a hood walked out from the darkness behind him.
Shaking her blonde hair that protruded from the hood.
“Hehe. Christina. When was it ever not dangerous?”
Seo-jun's mouth opened.
However, his voice was different from Seo-jun's. Probably the voice of the character named Dane.
“That is...”
“If you want to kill others, you must be prepared to die as well.”
“Yeah, fine. But be careful. They might have noticed.”
“Do not worry and go stay at the tavern.”
Christina nodded, saying she understood, handed over a note, and uttered quietly.
“Nothing is true. Doubt endlessly.”
Seo-jun replied to this.
“Even chaos.”
Then, he shot out a wire to hook a rope onto a nearby rooftop, and began to slide down that rope like a zipline.
And when he was almost there, he let go, landed on a streetlamp, and jumped down again to settle on the floor.
The moment his feet touched the ground, Seo-jun felt a sensation of strength spreading through his entire body.
“Ah, ah.”
Was the tutorial over?
He could speak properly, and his hands and feet moved.
Ring—
[Tutorial Quest - Assassination Mission]
[Etor is a high noble and a middle manager of a secret society that supplies street orphans to the Society and the Magic Tower.
Accordingly, the Assassin Guild has handed down Etor's assassination mission to their member, Dane.
Quest Clear Condition: Etor's death]
The sound of a notification was heard, and the game system window rose.
And the route to Etor's mansion and Etor's location were displayed on the map.
“It must be telling me to assassinate. First, I have to go there.”
Although it was Seo-jun's first time playing a game other than the AOS genre, he felt like he roughly knew what to do.
He first walked straight in the direction of the blue marker.
When the path was blocked in the middle, an alarm popped up.
[Climb up using the pipe.]
When he grabbed the pipe and exerted slight strength, he felt a sensation similar to when Dane moved his body.
“Correction is applied in this manner.”
However, when he completely relaxed his strength, he slid down.
[Try jumping.]
It was telling him to jump over the building, and he became curious about what would happen if he jumped incorrectly.
He fell straight between the buildings.
A faint pain was felt throughout his body.
[Try crossing using the rope.]
Since hanging on the rope did not require much strength, he tried staying hung.
When he held on for a bit long, he felt his strength gradually drain.
He fell to the floor once again.
Around the time he was enjoying himself, calling it an unfamiliar experience, only then did Seo-jun recall a fact he had forgotten.
‘I was broadcasting, right?’
Even so, not much time had passed yet, so how many people could there be...
[Viewers: 4]
He was surprised by the unexpected number.
It was said that originally, not even a single person might enter even if you broadcasted all day; was it thanks to choosing the game well, or thanks to the title?
Wondering if that was the case, he turned on the chat window.
-At this level, he is a real newbie, lol-
-Ah, lol. This is why I watch newbie broadcasts-
-If this is acting, it is at least a Nobel Prize, lol-
Oh.
The viewers were chatting among themselves.
By the way, thinking that they had watched everything up to what had just happened made him feel somewhat embarrassed.
“I am sorry. I just saw the chat now.”
-hihi-
-It's fine. Watching a newbie jumping around alone and finding it fascinating was also quite fun, lol-
Three out of the four viewers were chatting.
[Patient Riding a White Horse]
[The Best Defense is Winter Yellowtail]
[Public Toilet Brick Extortion King]
‘The nicknames are really...’
It was funny yet dizzying.
Were these kinds of nicknames a trend here?
Putting those thoughts behind him, Seo-jun first recalled the advice Tae-woo had left.
‘If there are no people, do not dwell on the number of viewers and practice filling the audio. If there are, comfortably communicate to the extent that the flow of the broadcast is not broken.’
The reason people came to broadcasts with not many viewers was usually because it was easy to communicate.
Because the chat windows of large streamers, called conglomerates, passed by in a flash, it was easy to get buried.
Seo-jun attempted a light conversation as he went to the target location.
-Is the room manager a real newbie?-
“Yes, that is right.”
-Ah, lol. I checked the room manager's record and came back, and it was clean. The creation date was also 2 days ago.-
“You can check that too?”
-Yes-
-You have to switch it to private.-
“That is annoying.”
Seo-jun did not feel the need to specifically turn it off.
-Then how did you turn on the broadcast if it was annoying?-
-Real, lol-
‘It is good that everyone is actively chatting, but is this okay?’
He felt the need to look at the chats of other broadcasts.
“Hmm, I arrived quickly. What should I do now?”
-Open the note-
-If you open the note, you can view information about the mansion in 3D-
-Since it is a tutorial, it tells you most of the information and the assassination route. Just do exactly as it says-
Unexpectedly, they answered properly to these kinds of questions.
Seo-jun opened the note as they said, and as the blueprint system was activated, a 3D screen like something seen in movies unfolded in front of him.
That screen could zoom in or out on a point, and rotating the angle, modifying the map—all of it was possible.
Furthermore, the structure of the grand mansion, secret passages, and enemy locations, as well as the route to infiltrate to where Etor was, were detailedly displayed.
The place where Etor was located was the second-floor bedroom, which could be called the deepest part of the mansion.
“The enemies are twenty. The weapons in the inventory are... the Assassin Guild-exclusive gauntlet and the sword stick?”
A sword stick is a weapon suitable for assassination and self-defense, made by turning the inside of a cane into a sheath and hiding a slender sword inside so that it can be drawn and used in an emergency.
And a blade was shallowly embedded so that he could cut enemies with the cane itself. The tip was pointed like the end of a sword.
In the gauntlet, an assassin's blade that popped out from the back of the hand and a wire ejected from the wrist were embedded.
“Are the weapons the default tutorial setup? Anyway, I just need to kill Etor, right?”
-Yes-
-Yes-
-Yes-
Shall I try it first?
Seo-jun held the sword stick and walked straight toward the main gate.
However, opposing chats rose immediately.
-No, I told you to do exactly as the note says-
-Leave him be. Other guys also climbed the walls on their own once they went to the main gate and died.-
-Lord, one guy is going-
“Why? Can I not go through the main gate?”
-No back-seat gaming. The room manager is a baby. We must spectate-
-You can. Yes, yes. Quickly open the main gate and enter-
-They are easy. They die even if you hit them once-
Their shift in attitude was top-tier.
“Hmm, it seems I should not go through the main gate.”
-Ah, the room manager noticed, you guys-
-Lord, one guy was about to go but stopped-
Seo-jun felt doubt at these reactions from the viewers.
“But I heard that in this game, any method works. Why can I not go through the main gate?”
-I told you it works?-
-Go go-
-Lol, stop teasing the newbie, you guys-
Perhaps unable to just watch, a viewer who had been quietly watching until now typed in the chat.
-Usually, instead of infiltrating and killing, just entering openly and killing all enemies is called a 'matchless' play style...-
That viewer's explanation was as follows.
When performing missions in this game, instead of killing the target in a single blow no matter how high of a position they are in, if detected, the player has to engage in a hardcore, one-to-many melee battle with NPCs who have several times more HP than the player, so people usually try their best not to get caught.
However, some hardcore veterans threw the assassination plan to the dogs and broke in openly through the main gate.
The so-called 'matchless' play style.
The matchless play style had a much higher difficulty than normal assassination play, even though there was no process of collecting information.
Shadows in the City received favorable reviews for naturally guiding people toward assassination play with this difficulty adjustment while still maintaining freedom.
“Then is it impossible to clear the tutorial with that matchless play style?”
-No idea. No one has cleared it yet.-
-To streamers, it is more beneficial to play other things first rather than pouring their time into that, lol-
-Someone challenged it for 10 hours, gave up, and said they would clear it after seeing the first playthrough ending-
-No news has come up from community veterans also-
“It means it is not impossible, right?”
Seo-jun focused only on this point.
-Yes, yes. It is probably possible if you have Shin Ha-yeon-tier controls-
-In theory, you just have to avoid all of Etor's attacks within the time limit and hit only vital spots with all your attacks-
-Super easy, lol. Is beating Shin Ha-yeon not something just anyone can do?-
“Shin Ha-yeon? Then, let us give it a try.”
Seo-jun spoke confidently.
Anyway, even if it was an AI, winning was winning, right?
-????-
-Do you even know who Shin Ha-yeon is?-
-Catch the bastard who chatted above that anyone can beat Shin Ha-yeon, lol-
Seo-jun walked straight to the main gate.
-Lord, he is going in the end-
-Ah. Newbie... Do you really have to taste it to know if it is poop or doenjang?-
-5 minutes later, room manager (crawling on the ground): 'It is correct that they will not catch me if I do this, right?'
Lol-
-Lol-