The Man with the Most Kills (2)
The child's bruised hands and arms, hidden under messy hair, trembled slightly. The child cautiously moved their hands away and stole a glance at Seowoon.
Seowoon's brows furrowed as he saw how much younger the child looked than expected.
He quickly scanned the child's thin, scrawny body—this wasn't the physique of someone who had survived through sheer patience and hiding.
"Those aren't just ordinary wounds."
Bruises could be shrugged off, but the burns peeking through the torn clothes on the child's back and thighs were recent.
He knew too well how inadequate healing scrolls could leave wounds half-mended like that.
As he watched, the child's pupils trembled, and their cracked, bleeding lips moved.
"R-Run… away…"
Before the child could finish speaking, an enemy leapt from the nearby bushes, spear in hand.
It seemed to be meant as a surprise, deadly ambush, but Seowoon had been expecting it from the moment he saw the child's injuries.
He dodged the spear with a slight bend of his waist and deflected the charging man with a light push to the chest, sending him stumbling backward.
"So you're teamed up with this kid."
The man, running a hand over the dented chestplate he'd just been struck on, glared at the child.
"You little shit! Just wait, you bastard!"
After yelling at the child, he turned his attention to Seowoon, pulling a marble from his subspace and speaking again.
"You've got some fun tricks, huh? If I kill you, those skills'll be mine, right?"
"You've got quite the imagination."
The man grinned instead of replying and hurled the marble. At that moment, five massive fireballs surged toward Seowoon and the child.
"Kehehe! Got this from some bleeding-heart mage! Now die like the pathetic fool you are!"
The child curled up in terror as the fireballs flew at them, trembling uncontrollably.
It was easy to tell—the man wasn't new to this.
He'd used the child as bait for a surprise attack. And if that failed, he didn't care if the kid got caught in the blast; he'd still activate magic or traps.
Those injuries weren't from enemies being cautious—it was clear this man, supposedly the child's teammate, had inflicted them.
"So, even if your ally dies with the enemy, you figure it's worth it if you win?"
Seowoon clenched his fist and stepped forward into the path of the oncoming fireballs.
Then he simply threw a punch.
-Whoosh!
With a loud roar of protest, the fireballs split apart, veering away from Seowoon and the child.
"Tch! Guess you've got something up your—"
The man was reaching for something else from subspace to cast another spell, but never finished his sentence.
-Crack!
Seowoon's fist smashed into the man's helmet and crushed his skull.
In the Cloyd Survival Game, death came with a unique experience.
This man, too, had his first out-of-body experience as he looked down at his own smashed head in disbelief.
"No!!!"
He screamed, voice hoarse, realizing the child would now have to go through this countless more times because of him.
There was still so much left to gain in this world—rewards to be claimed.
He couldn't accept dying like this. The thought consumed him.
Then, in his view, appeared Seowoon's foot, pressing down on his lifeless corpse.
-Crunch!
His neck bent lifelessly under the pressure, and just like that, the game ended for him—and he awoke back in reality.
The child instinctively crawled backwards, dragging themselves away from Seowoon—the man who had just effortlessly killed someone unimaginably strong.
"How old… are you?" Seowoon asked.
"N-Nine years old…"
Seeing the fear in the child's eyes, he couldn't bring himself to ask anything more.
Sadly, there was nothing he could do for the child.
Once someone joined this game, everyone was bound by the same rules.
Unfair as it was, the game enforced a warped sense of equal survival.
And if you survived, you were rewarded accordingly…
Like it or not, that's the way this world worked.
That's why he didn't ask the child's name, or where they came from, or anything else.
Getting emotionally attached would only make it harder to turn away.
"This is my second time playing this game. The first time, I was as weak as you. I survived by hiding and scavenging like crazy. Let me tell you one thing—make it into the top 20 survivors. If you do, your life in the real world will be better than it is now."
After saying that, he tossed two leather pouches in front of the child.
One contained jerky. The other held a 3-circle magic stone.
He had already moved on to 4-circle stones—these were useless to him now.
"Whether you survive or not from here on out depends entirely on your own will and skill."
He said only that much and turned away.
He quickly turned his back and walked away because he saw the blistered lips of the child, who had felt kindness, moving as if trying to speak.
He didn't have the courage to exchange any more words with that pitiful-looking child.
Just the child's physical condition and appearance, which hinted at the abuse he had suffered, stirred sympathy in him—but this was a world where even sympathy was not allowed.
Suddenly, he found himself resenting the one who had created this game, this world.
As he walked away, hoping the child would be as lucky as he was, he heard the small voice of the child behind him.
"Thank you…"
Trying to shake off that weak voice, Seowoon unfolded his movement technique and rushed toward his next destination.
Having entered the boss mob's spawn area, Seowoon looked up at the sky.
Before he knew it, the sun had passed high noon.
He had taken longer than expected, as he'd been pacing himself carefully along the way.
Just looking at this area, where dead-looking, blackened trees had somehow grown over the rocky terrain to form a forest, made him feel uneasy.
The atmosphere created by the pitch-black trees on the red earth, without a single fallen leaf, was the perfect image of death.
"A boss mob that appears in a place like this…"
A sudden chill ran down his spine.
"But then why… are there no enemies in sight?"
Come to think of it, unlike before, he hadn't even tried to predict the enemy's movements to avoid them.
He had just followed the most convenient path.
Of course, he had the confidence to handle enemies quickly if he ran into them, so that was why he could act like that.
Survivors.
41/200
.
.
.
Jin Seowoon → Giltanwayne (Crushed and confirmed kill.)
The only person who had been eliminated was the one he had stomped and confirmed the kill on.
"Only day 3, and everyone's already turtling?"
It didn't make sense. By now, everyone should've been used to the game and frantically farming, driven by greed for items, yet he saw almost no enemies.
"Is it because this area isn't focused around villages?"
But that couldn't explain everything—weren't things like boss monsters and buff monsters supposed to be enticing enough to draw people out?
He sensed something was off and tried thinking it through, but no clear answer came to mind.
"The real question now is whether or not to try the boss…"
Unlike buff monsters, whose locations were precisely marked, boss monsters only had their spawn areas indicated.
"That alone suggests boss mobs might aggro on sight…"
It was just a hunch, but he didn't think it was wrong. With his experience playing games, he could reasonably expect that.
The real issue was whether the boss was a monster meant to be killable, or some overpowered creature like the buff monsters that was practically impossible to fight.
As he brooded on that while glaring into the creepy forest thick with twisted trees, a system alert rang out.
[Ding! The boss monster has been hunted! Glory to the duo Kang Ki-chan and Dorlif!]
"What?!"
He wasn't surprised because the boss had been defeated. He'd known that some of the players in the waiting room didn't look like newbies, and he couldn't be sure that none of them had more experience than he did.
The real shock came from the name: Kang Ki-chan.
That guy…
Out of the many people in the waiting room, the only one in a familiar outfit—a student who looked like he was in middle or high school.
As soon as he heard the name, the guy's face came to mind.
Then, Seowoon dashed into the forest of creepy trees, pushing them aside.
After all, they were enemies—he would have to face them eventually.
It would've been ideal if the guy had died to someone else, sparing him the trouble, but now that he had hunted a boss monster, he had become the most concerning opponent.
He didn't know what kind of item Kang Ki-chan had obtained, but one thing was clear:
Whatever it was, the best time to deal with him was before he got used to it.
If the item had a cooldown, even better. But even if it didn't—whether it was martial arts, magic, weapon, or armor—it would be much easier to deal with him before he got accustomed to it.
Having wandered for some time through the forest filled with those unsettling trees, Seowoon finally pulled out his chainsword, determined.
Once he began chopping down the trees blocking his way, it became much easier to move.
I should've come straight to the boss area from the start.
If his timing had been just right, he could've ambushed the duo mid-raid. That regret lingered.
As he roamed the area, cutting through everything in his path, he eventually saw a massive, blackened tree lying on the ground.
Eh… An Ent?
Its roots looked like legs, and it had two dents that looked like closed eyes, plus an open hole with visible teeth that could only be a mouth.
It looked just like the Ents he often saw in games.
So the boss was an Ent.
Staring at the fallen Ent, which looked to be at least 10 meters tall, he quickly scanned the surroundings.
All around were signs of torn-up trees and intense battle.
In the midst of searching for recent traces of the enemy, Seowoon suddenly saw a flash of light accompanied by a strong wave of mana not far off.
— Ssu-kwaaaak.
The indescribable sound reached his ears a moment later, but Seowoon dashed toward the source without hesitation.
A 6-to-2 situation.
It was supposed to be a two-person duo setting, yet six people were surrounding the two, clearly on alert.
Traces of a heavy spell lingered in the air, smoke rising between them as evidence of recent magical impact.
"Teaming?"
Teaming referred to a tactic from the Royal Ground game Seowoon often played, where players of the same nationality would form unofficial alliances—unsupported by the game—to hunt others as a group.
Having experienced it firsthand, it was a deeply frustrating tactic. As such, the six players surrounding the duo suddenly looked highly suspicious in his eyes.
But this wasn't a light, casual game like Log.
Forming temporary alliances to suppress a powerful enemy could very well be a survival strategy.
Of course, speaking from experience, it was never a pleasant one.
"Getting ganged up on always feels like shit…"
Still, he had absolutely zero intention of helping out.
Instead, Seowoon observed each player carefully, analyzing how he might maneuver things into a mutual-destruction scenario and reap the rewards from the sidelines.
Lying flat among unpleasant trees, peering into the battlefield, his eyes grew busier by the second.
"Sorry, but this is where it ends. We took down the boss monster."
A man in a robe stepped forward, leading with his staff. His pale, slender arm was revealed as he moved.
"Is that him?"
Of the two surrounded players, one had a spiked mace with multiple horns slung over his shoulder and wore only a breastplate. His bulky build didn't match the student Seowoon had seen in the waiting room.
Then it had to be the other one—the robed figure with the staff. That had to be Kang Ki-chan.
"I thought we agreed not to fight in the boss zone."
"That was before the boss got taken down!"
A man in leather armor with a stylishly groomed mustache barked back, and the robed man scoffed in a youthful voice.
"Heh. Funny how the guys who always talk about honor work so well together when it comes to shady stuff like this."
At that, the three knights in armor flinched and took half a step back.
— Thunk!
Next to the robed man, a burly warrior slammed his mace into the ground and spoke up.
"Imperial dogs are all the same. Come at us all you want. Warriors of Sisle don't count heads before we fight."
At that moment, the only woman among the six stepped forward—seemingly a martial artist.
Her attire looked more like ceremonial garb worn by aristocrats or high-ranking officials than traditional martial clothing, suggesting she was not a typical martial artist.
"Looks like she's from a wealthy family."
Whatever Seowoon thought, the woman, with skin like white jade, opened her mouth:
"I don't care about the conflicts of your world. What matters here is practical gain. So—are you willing to share the items you acquired?"
"Share what? There wasn't even that much loot to begin with, and you want to split it eight ways?"
At the man's irritated reply, the woman bent her knees and extended her fist forward.
— Bang!
With even that small motion, the air exploded, and white mist began to flow from her fist.
"Ice technique?"
A fan of wuxia novels, Seowoon could tell from the chill emanating from her fist that she used some form of ice martial arts.
Watching the scene unfold, Seowoon was clearly entertained by the tension.
It was a perfect "popcorn moment."
"Too bad I don't have any popcorn."
Just then, the man in the robe threw back his hood and shouted loudly:
"You can come out now."
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