I Gave Up Being Stronger

Cha Jin-Hyeok had died more than a dozen times in the Tutorial Dungeon at Level 5 before his regression. ‘How can I not die?’ was never a consideration in his mind. He knew he was going to die many times, so what he tried to figure out was how to make it less painful.

‘In hindsight, I was probably a crazy person.’

In any case, he learned a lot from his many deaths. He got used to the pain and even acquired a Trait called ‘Death Immunity.’ This Trait was only available in the Tutorial Field during the Open Beta.

“You know, I think there are things you can only learn in times like this, like how to detect really dangerous attacks, and how to fail and die. You need to go through a lot of trial and error, with no help from your items. How long do you think relying on armor is going to work?”

The number of Likes continued to rise rapidly. It was unprecedentedly fast. The name ‘Kim Chul-Soo’ became trending on Nerver, which was the System’s biggest online community.

-He hit the nail on the head with that statement.

└ I feel so much better now.

└ I heard there were ridiculous strategies spreading across Earth.

└ I wish there were more Chul-Soos out there.

It was a refreshing livestream for the viewers.

-How is that newbie talking like he is an old-time Player?

└ That’s how good he is. Haha.

└ Don’t you guys think he is a regressor? I heard regression is a bug.

└ I bet you’re one of those idiots who type stupid shit without even watching his old videos.

└ What’s with the hate? Shut the hell up.

└ Your face is ugly.

-Guys, stop fighting. Chul-Soo had already confirmed that he is not a regressor in one of his old videos.

Chul-Soo showed great insight and made the viewers feel relieved. The fact that he was only a low-Level Open Beta Player had the community buzzing. This was an insight that a low-Level Player could not possibly have.

“What about you, Oppa?” Cha Jin-Sol said.

“What about me?”

“By the same logic, shouldn’t you also grow without the help from the items?”

That statement startled Jin-Hyeok.

‘Wait, come to think of it, in the world of academia, you always need to prepare and review.’

Jin-Hyeok thought that if he repeated the experience once again, he might get a new experience.

‘That sounds exciting—No, no!’

He knew he shouldn’t even start feeling this way.

It was like smoking. Once you started, it was hard to stop.

‘I shouldn’t even start at all.’

He made up his mind and told his sister about his reasons.

“I am a Streamer, I do not need that kind of learning.”

“Did you just flinch?”

“Did I? I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? I swear you just flinched. Like you were surprised or something.”

She was right. He did flinch. However, it was for a completely different reason than she thought.

“Streamers are different. They do not have to die.”

“What’s so different about them? Don’t you learn a lot from dying too?”

‘That’s exactly what I am afraid of.’

Jin-Hyeok could not say that out loud.

“Well, Healers are actually in battles, and Streamers just watch from the back,” Jin-Hyeok said.

“I don’t understand…”

“It doesn’t matter, and I really don’t care if you are convinced or not.”

The brother and sister bickered for a while, then got back to the point.

“So you’re telling me not to wear armor?” Jin-Sol asked again.

“Yes. Healers are supposed to heal people, not focus on defense. Get an item that increases your healing abilities. Also, since stamina is important for Healers, you should equip items that increase your stamina.”

“But that is different from what other people are saying around the world…” Jin-Sol sounded slightly dissatisfied.

“That’s because the entire world is fucking stupid.”

“...What?”

“How can idiots come up with good strategies? They can’t.”

There was another spike in his number of Likes. It was almost as high as the number of viewers.

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

Joseph received a new notification on his cell phone.

[I am about to enter the Bupyeong Station Dungeon.]

He immediately tuned into Jin-Hyeok’s livestream.

‘Wait, he’s just going to start his livestream like this?’

Joseph could not understand. Usually, Streamers had a warm-up period before they started streaming. It was common for Streamers to notify their viewers and wait for them so that they could get a decent number of viewers to tune in.

‘He didn’t even show any opening ads or any attention-grabbing thumbnails.’

Heck, even television shows and movies would use trailers to build interest.

‘And there is still no audience interaction.’

What Joseph saw from his phone was Jin-Hyeok’s team entering the Bupyeong Station Dungeon. He did not tell the viewers how the team got together, what they were going to do, or how they were going to clear the Dungeon. He just started his livestream.

Joseph could never get used to this kind of livestream.

‘He even started his livestream after killing some of the monsters!’

Chul-Soo’s teammates looked exhausted. They all looked very tired.

Joseph heard Chul-Soo’s voice.

“This will probably be the first death.”

Thud!

A large fist of a monster slammed into Seo Ji-Soo’s temple.

“The Shadow Executioner is dead.”

It was a huge monster, over two meters tall. Its name was Brass Golem.

“Now Ji-Ah is also dead.”

Soon after…

“Jin-Sol is also dead. Jeong-Hyeon and Jae-Hyeon are holding on, but they are struggling.”

Eventually, both Kim Jeong-Hyeon and Mok Jae-Hyeon were also killed.

“With that, everyone on my team is wiped out except for me. The Brass Golems are stronger than I thought. This Dungeon has a setting where the difficulty is very high, but the revival timer is only thirty minutes. We are going to take a break and I will see you guys back in thirty minutes.”

It was the kind of livestream that only showed results and not the process.

Joseph looked back at his phone several times in disbelief, but the livestream had indeed been turned off just like Chul-Soo had said.

‘What the hell is he doing?’

All he saw was the appearance of giant monsters called the Brass Golems and the annihilation of Jin-Hyeok’s team.

The livestream only lasted about ten minutes.

‘The livestream time, incoming viewership, and attention are essentially money and experience points for Streamers.’

Egan Paul normally studied all of these things thoroughly before starting his livestream. He even would use big data and numerous psychological theories.

However, Jin-Hyeok did not seem interested in any of that.

‘What if he is alone? What then?’

Joseph could only shake his head, not realizing that Jin-Hyeok was using the ‘All-Clear’ Achievement.

Half an hour later, the livestream came back on.

From Joseph’s point of view, Jin-Hyeok seemed unaffected.

“This is our fourth time, and I am afraid you guys might get bored if you watch the same thing over and over again, but the team members are so weak that I can’t help it. As you guys can see, this content is about the growth of the weak Players, so I hope you guys will understand.”

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

Jin-Hyeok did not see this one coming either.

‘My team members are too weak. I was going to fight the monsters moderately and then pretend to struggle and find the hidden task and get my three hundred million Dias.’

The Brass Golem was a Tutorial-Level monster with an average Level of 29. It had very high defensive stats and did not get tired. If Players did not take advantage of its weakness, which was its Core, it could be very difficult to defeat the monsters. On the other hand, it was an easy monster to deal with if the Players focused on its Core.

‘I already taught them that the glowing little stone on its chest is its weakness…’

He could not believe that they were this underwhelming even after he gave them the answer.

However, they had their own excuses. In their defense, Brass Golems usually walked around in packs of five or six. His team had never faced that many at once before, so they could not adapt easily.

‘They’ve already died three times.’

Jin-Hyeok had not been able to get a good clip for his livestream for nearly two hours.

He wanted his weak team members who could not do anything to become strong and fight the monsters impressively. After fighting hard like that, he would find the hidden task and get the Achievement for being the first to clear this Tutorial Dungeon.

That was the flow of the content he had envisioned. However, it seemed like it would take too long to reach that point, so Jin-Hyeok had no choice but to keep ending his livestream.

‘We’re screwed.’

Jeong-Hyeon was doing a good job, but he could not do this alone.

‘I need to think of another plan.’

The problem was that five or six of the monsters were swarming at once. It would be a lot better if there were only two or three of them. He really did not want to do it himself, but this was a situation where he really had no choice.

‘I’ve got about fifteen minutes before they come back to life.’

He moved closer to the monsters, and the monsters also moved closer to him.

Whoosh!

Jin-Hyeok felt their attacks. They were fierce and destructive, but it was not strong enough to excite him.

The attacks were so slow that it was harder to get hit by them.

‘This is so easy. If I dodge like this, it creates so many openings…’

He immediately closed the distance. He wrapped the dagger with the Broadcaster’s Barrier and plunged it into one of the monsters\' Core.

‘Hm… It’s tougher than I thought.’

However, that did not matter. With the right amount of impact, the Core shattered with a pop. If it did not work the first time, stabbing the same spot several times would do the trick.

[You have defeated a Brass Golem.]

After killing one, Jin-Hyeok was a little dumbfounded.

‘I don’t understand. Why can’t they do this?’

Jeong-Hyeon managed to do it once, but the others were not even close.

Behind him, another Brass Golem swung its fist.

‘I can’t believe they can’t dodge this…’

It was as if the monsters were counting down before attacking and announcing to the world that they were about to attack.

‘Top and bottom, or right to left…’

Even their patterns were simple. There were only two directions of attack. This meant that he only needed to recognize one of those two directions and dodge it.

Jin-Hyeok sidestepped without even trying. A single step backward was enough.

‘It’s blowing my mind! How is this hard? Do I have too high of a standard?’

Jin-Hyeok wanted to see if the attack was stronger than he thought, so he got hit on purpose. Thanks to the Broadcaster’s Barrier, it did no damage to him.

‘I’m sure my standard is not that high… It’s strange…’

He could not understand it, but he reduced the number of the monsters anyway.

[You have received a Brass Fragment.]

[You have received a Brass Fragment.]

It was easy to kill them and easier to loot them.

Now, there was only one of them left, and one by one, the team members began to wake up.

“This is not going to work. Let’s train with only one monster first,” Jin-Hyeok said.

“Oppa…”

“What?”

“What… what happened here?”

“What do you mean what happened? I realized this is not going to work, so I killed all the Golems but one.”

“You can do that…?”

“Of course.”

‘It’s a lot weirder if you can’t do this. But, I am a patient Streamer so I should tell them nicely.’

“You guys will get there with practice.”

Jin-Hyeok was sure that he didn’t become this generous because he relieved stress by defeating those monsters.

Absolutely not.

With only one more monster to kill, he knew they could do it. He decided it was worth the hassle of teaching them one step at a time.

“Ji-Soo, what are you doing? This is your turn! You should’ve gone in right after Ji-Ah’s attack. Hey, Jae-Hyeon! You need to block that attack from the right. That way, Ji-Soo can move around more freely. I’m not expecting you to read two steps ahead, but you need to anticipate at least one step ahead! That’s it, Jeong-Hyeon! Good! If you hit the target accurately and resonate precisely, the destructive power becomes much stronger. What was it called again? … Yes, impact! Give it a little impact. Look, I told you. You can break it with one hit.”

The only one he really liked was Jeong-Hyeon.

Meanwhile, Jin-Sol was killed by the subsequent attack from the Brass Golem.

‘Wow… Our Priest walked up to the spot without even calculating the respawn time of the monster… I really don’t know what to say. I don’t even know where to start teaching them.’

After the Healer died, the rest of the team eventually died. Clearly, they had a long way to go.

It took about ten hours for them to get used to the Brass Golem.

‘Out of those ten hours, less than ten minutes are video-worthy…’

Jin-Hyeok realized how insane Egan Paul was to be able to get that much high-quality footage of him day in and day out.

‘I guess that’s why he is considered the top Streamer. I can never do that.’

The team members looked exhausted. They were about to be burned out.

“Let’s come back tomorrow.”

A day later, they entered the Bupyeong Station Dungeon again.

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

“Let’s start the livestream.”

This time, Jin-Hyeok started off by killing just two of the Golems.

Against three, they did quite well. And just like that, another two days had passed.

Even though it was considered the hardest Tutorial Dungeon, it was still a Tutorial Dungeon.

The team got used to the Bupyeong Station Dungeon. It was a bit surprising that it took them three days when he thought it would only take one.

“In the beginning, all they did was die. So this is an amazing improvement. They were really great.”

Jin-Hyeok made up some excuse, thinking it would be less cathartic for the viewers if they found out that he, a Player who had overpowered skills like the Broadcaster’s Barrier, had actively trained them.

“I guess immense hard work does not betray you after all.”

In the meantime, the team leveled up a few times, and it became easier for them to deal with the monsters.

After about two hours, they were able to take on five Golems without Jin-Hyeok’s help.

“Now they are able to fight five Brass Golems. That’s a lot of improvement.”

He didn’t like that it took them this long, but it was true that they had improved. The team was getting stronger and stronger, up until they had killed all the Brass Golems in the Bupyeong Station Dungeon.

‘Good. We killed them all before they respawned.’

The hidden task in the Dungeon was to kill all the Brass Golems before they respawned.

[You have killed all the Brass Golems.]

[You have fulfilled the condition to unlock 「Golem Breaker」.]

‘Finally!’

The long-awaited notification popped up. The only thing that mattered now was whether they were the first ones to do this.

Being first was important. They needed to be the first to get the three hundred million Dias.

‘I’m sure no one beat us to it, right?’

He waited a bit.