.｡.:✧ Chapter 2 ✧:.｡.

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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As soon as I stepped onto the upper floor, an irritated shout rang out, “Who’s there?”

I stopped in my tracks. Two men, each armed with a crude wooden club and wearing nothing but a loincloth like myself, were approaching me.

It was exactly as I had seen in the game. Soon, the remaining one who was loitering behind them would join as well.

The two narrowed their eyes at the sight of me, nearly naked with only a loincloth, just like themselves. Then, they slightly relaxed their guard and exchanged words with each other.

“Who’s this guy? Was he in the same situation as us?”

“Since he came from below, it’s possible.”

“But didn’t Jack say he had checked everything earlier?”

“When has that bastard not been sloppy? He probably did a half-assed check and said there was no one.”

“Ah, that idiot, seriously. Jack! Jack! Get your ass over here!”

It seemed they had mistaken me for a fellow prisoner who had been locked up in the lowest level of the dungeon, since I had emerged from there and was wearing the same attire as them, with only a loincloth.

In the game, there were no such dialogues. They would just rush at you the moment they spotted you.

As the one on the left impatiently called out the name Jack, another man walked out from behind a pillar.

“What is it this time?”

“What do you mean, you idiot? Didn’t I tell you not to slack off and properly check? Someone else just crawled out from below, so what do you think?”

“What?”

At those words, Jack, with a frown on his face, looked at me. Then, clicking his tongue, he swung the crude wooden club in his hand and walked towards me.

“Fine, I get it. I just need to take care of him, right?”

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

Based on the initial conversation, I thought there was a chance to avoid a fight if I played my cards right, but seeing him say he would take care of me without the others trying to stop him, it seemed that was my own misunderstanding.

The man quickly closed the distance between us. If the pattern was the same as in the game, it was obvious how his first attack would come. I glanced behind me and focused on his weapon-wielding arm.

The arm was raised high.

‘Now.’

Recalling the sensation of pressing a keyboard to make the character walk backward, I swiftly took two steps back. As soon as I dodged, the club sliced through the air.

“Whoa!”

The man’s body swayed heavily. Seizing that opening, I quickly struck his head with my club. A crisp sound of impact rang out. Perhaps his feet got tangled from the shock, but with his eyes half-dazed, he was on the verge of falling over.

In the game, it took three hits to kill him anyway. Without giving him a chance to rest, I struck him precisely two more times, and his body, having lost balance, stumbled and tumbled down the stairs.

The sound of tumbling echoed. With his neck twisted 180 degrees at the end, there was no need to check further; his death was certain.

‘Fortunately, nothing has changed.’

The patterns and situations all matched. If there was any difference, it would be that in the game, the motion of falling down the stairs and dying like that wasn’t implemented.

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

“You bastard!”

While I was lost in thought, looking at the corpse that had tumbled down the stairs, the remaining two cursed and pounced on me simultaneously.

I dodged the first incoming attack by rolling and struck the attacker’s back. Taking advantage of the brief stun inflicted on the guy who took a direct hit, I rolled on the ground once more and swung my arm. It was another clean hit.

Unable to regain his senses after taking two consecutive hits, I swung my arm one last time at the dazed man. As the club struck his head, an even duller sound rang out compared to before.

He collapsed on the floor and never moved again.

Witnessing the scene of his two comrades dying in an instant, the last one charged at me as if going all-in. Of course, he also ended up sprawled on the ground after receiving three blows, just like the others.

‘It’s a bit disappointing that there’s no UI.’

The fact that the first mobs appearing here die in three hits for the Forsaken, and that the enemy placement and appearance are the same, is identical. The corpses aren’t disappearing, but that’s an irrelevant aspect.

However, the complete absence of a UI was quite disappointing.

In other words, not only health, mana, stamina, and combat fatigue but also faith that would be gained by allocating stats later and the quickslots for placing consumables would not be displayed at all.

I didn’t even hope for enemy health bars, but it would have been nice to have a way to accurately gauge such information.

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

For now, I had a rough estimate in my head. Based on the initial playthrough of the Forsaken, I knew that three rolls would deplete the stamina.

‘I’ll have to investigate more later.’

Leaving behind the prisoners sprawled on the floor, I headed towards the door on the opposite side of the stairs. Behind this door was a prisoner who could be considered the mid-boss of the tutorial area. The leader of the guys who had collapsed over there.

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

He was nothing special. The weapon he wielded was merely a wooden club, and his patterns were absurdly simple. If I remembered correctly, roughly ten regular hits were enough to take him down.

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

In his hand was a well-crafted steel sword.

“…?”

Wait a minute.

“No, what the fuck.”

Leaving behind the corpse of the muscular giant with a shattered head, I slumped against a pillar and let out a hollow laugh.

“Is the mod still applied?”

It was an utterly unfair situation.

If this were the vanilla state without any mods installed, thanks to my past record, I might have struggled a bit in the very early stages, but once I took down a couple of bosses, it would have been a smooth sailing from there.

I was someone who had cleared vanilla Brightest Darkness 4 with various challenges like playing blindfolded, swapping the mouse and keyboard, using my feet, and even a level 1 barehanded run, all with no-hit and no-damage.

But that wasn’t the case.

Realizing that the “The Darkest Light” mod, which had been installed right before I was sucked into the game, was still applied, I couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh.

I picked up the steel sword the mid-boss had been wielding and examined it from various angles. No matter how much I rubbed my eyes, it was a steel sword, not a wooden club. It was the exact one he wielded in the Darkest Light Mod.

‘This is driving me insane, seriously.’

What kind of mod was The Darkest Light? Wasn’t it a mod so brutally unforgiving that it instantly turned me, someone with over 10,000 hours of playtime, back into a newbie?

And I ended up being transported here with that damn thing applied? It was so absurd that I couldn’t even speak.

‘Just defeating the Human Butcher will be a huge challenge.’

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

Despite his overwhelming impact from the very beginning, which was meant to instill fear in the player, his patterns were limited to about six even with the enemy enhancement mod.

Moreover, all his patterns were slow, making it very easy to dodge by rolling.

He was called the gatekeeper of the early game for newcomers starting Brightest Darkness 4, but by the second playthrough, you could take him down with a sneer.

The problem was that in the enemy enhancement mod, even grazing any of the Human Butcher’s patterns meant instant death.

No, it wasn’t just an issue with the Human Butcher. As long as the enemies were enhanced by the Darkest Light Mod, all boss-level and mid-boss-level enemies would kill you with a single touch, no matter how much health you had.

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

‘I must obtain that weapon no matter what.’

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

A weapon called the “Blood-Stained Sword,” which had performance that could be considered a cheat key until the early to mid-game. The difference in difficulty between having it and not having it in the early game was like heaven and earth.

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

Progressing through the early game without the Blood-Stained Sword was tantamount to suicide.

Whether you had armor or not, whether you maxed out your health stat or not, you would always get one-shot by a boss’s attack. You couldn’t even withstand more than two hits from regular mobs on the streets.

If all attacks were one-hit kills for me, I should at least wield a good weapon and aim for a mutual one-hit kill, right? If I die in one hit while the enemy takes five, it would be quite unfair for me.

“……”

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

In Brightest Darkness 4, the moment you went through this door, the Human Butcher, who had been wandering around, would conveniently break through a wall and appear, spotting the player and giving chase.

That way, you would engage in a game of cat and mouse throughout the dungeon, barely surviving with the help of a certain knight.

Alternatively, you could also defeat him right here.

By doing so, you could skip the entire chase sequence and the subsequent events, directly meet the knight, and leave the tutorial area, which was a method favored by speedrunners.

Of course, that only applied to vanilla.

If you were going to speedrun in the Brightest Darkness Mod, where the bosses’ health was insanely increased across the board, the right choice was to just run away.

“There’s… no other choice.”

That’s right. There was no other choice. In the game, I could skip the Blood-Stained Sword and progress by recklessly retreating and defeating bosses barehanded, but now, I had to grab everything I could.

Having made my decision, I opened the door.

─ROAAARRR!!!!!!

As soon as I stepped into the corridor, the roar of the Human Butcher echoed from the far end.

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