One Man Army Chapter 66-67

Channel one became the single best channel, just like its name, 'One'. The viewers discussed about the Heroic Lands and its contents that Gale had shown them even after the broadcast was over, and claimed that they needed to get through the Path to Death as soon as possible.
However, it wasn't like the Path to Death became easier just because they wanted to. Thanks to Gale's broadcast, the guilds with enough power started to attack the Path to Death, but it still did not allow a single user to pass again.

"One guild? Was there such a guild?"
Seo Wontae tilted his head and checked the report again.
"It's a small, elite-force guild, that is wrapped in mysteriousness, but and they're quite famous. BJ Gale, that we reported to you last time, is the guild master of this guild."
"Ah! The solo play user from the Cave of Giants?"
"Yes, that is him."
Thanks to Gale's solo play on the Cave of Giants, Raonsoft had a very hard time.
"That user called Gale…… he's not using a hack. How can he progress at such a fast rate?"
"It is impossible to find out about the details, and according to Chaos's reply he's a quadra-soul user, and has an extremely normal set of ancient knowledge."
"A quadra soul? Is that even possible? It's not like we sell karma coupons for cash……."
"I also find it curious, but I cannot find about anymore."
"Whoa…… that's an interesting user."
"He is classified as an attentive user in our team and is under our monitoring."
"How about the other members of the One guild?"
"The thing is…… we aren't aware of all the members of the One guild just yet. It's so secretive that the only known ones are BJ Gale and the PvP user Blake. The rest are not even known yet. We don't even know how many members there are in the guild either."
"The guild is just as mysterious as this Gale user."
"It seems like it's a gathering of special, and extremely elite users.'
"This guild is also under monitoring, correct?"
"Yes. They're targets of monitoring along with Gale. However…… there isn't any information about them whether it's online or offline, so there aren't many things we can find about about them."
"Keep up your monitoring just in case. Oh! The proposal to lower the difficulty of Path of Despair will not be accepted. No matter how I think about it, lowering the difficulty now feels as though we're forgetting about the future because of our immediate losses. The difficulty will not be increased or decreased. It will stay as it is."
Due to the complaints from the users, the operation team proposed to nerf the Path of Despair (aka Path to Death), but Seo Wontae felt that this would be too much interference into the game and put down the proposal.
"Understood, sir."
The operation team leader also nodded without saying anything back. Actually, he only proposed it just in case, and didn't actually think that there was a need for it to be nerfed. EL was a world that was highly completed, so it would be better not to touch it as much as possible.
Even after the operation team leader left, Seo Wontae tapped on his desk for quite a while with a bitter smile on his face.
'The game was designed under the assumption that there may be a total freak that may surpass everyone's imaginations…… but to think there is even more of a freak than what I could imagine……. So, the world is wide and there are a lot of freaks out there?'
Seo Wontae could only bitterly laugh at the appearance of Gale and the One guild that completely surpassed his imaginations.
Though, he didn't even know in his dreams that the user that surpassed his imagination was only a single person, and that person had returned from the future.

'We'll pop One guild's bubble!'
This was Crusader's declaration.
They declared that on various EL forum sites and said that they'll boldly challenge the One guild on tomorrow's Live Channel regular broadcast.
At the same time, they also threatened by saying that they'll give orders to kill on sight any members of the One guild if they did not accept the war.
Crusader thought that this daring provocation was definitely going to profit them whether One guild accepted or not.
Mutou believed that his one move would resuscitate the completely screwed channel Crusader, and also raise the popularity of their guild.
Of course, the reactions weren't that positive. Their intentions were obvious, so the majority of users criticized them instead.
Although some of the Japanese users spoke up for them, but negative reactions were the majority even within Japan.
However, Mutou had already expected this reaction. The reason he still did it was because noise marketing was also a marketing strategy and they may receive great effects.
The noise would disappear soon anyway, and their popularity would remain behind. That's how it worked around here.

'Pah! Crusader? A guild war?"
Sanghyuk, who received a report from Ilya, laughed the moment the guild war notification popped up.
'Crusader…… How long were these guys able to keep the live channel again?'
Sanghyuk combed through his memories and tried hard to think about what information he had about Crusader, but he couldn't think up of that much.
In the first place, Crusader was outside of his interest.
In his previous life, Crusader was also one of the first 30 guilds to win a live channel, but they were also the guild that gave up the channel and disappeared without a sound.
"A guild war, huh……. It does make me feel ridiculous."
Muttered Sanghyuk in a small voice and had called out various menus related to the guild.
Crusader's declaration of war.
If Sanghyuk accepted this guild war, then a two-way guild war would be established. Of course, there was no need to accept it either. However, if he didn't accept, his guild reputation would fall a little.
Guild reputation decided the level of the guild, so refusing the guild war several times may actually result in a decrease of guild level.
Of course, it wasn't like one or two rejections had much effect. And right now, Sanghyuk wasn't planning to level up his guild either. The most important reason for leveling up a guild was to raise the number of members limitation and accept more members, but the One guild was a 1-man guild, so that kind of thing meant nothing.
'So, they want to gain some attention by using the One guild, huh?'
Sanghyuk naturally knew what they were thinking. Actually, this was obvious in anyone's eyes.
"Ilya, there's some work to do."
Sanghyuk was planning to use the 'Gather Information' skill from the Hiddenline and get the information he wanted.
"Gather information about the Crusader guild. I especially need information on their core guild members. Give me the first, simple report in around 4 hours. And give me the secondary detailed report in 24 hours."
"Understood. I'll immediately utilize all the information network of the Hiddenline to gather information."
"Oh, and let's manipulate something while we're at it. Leak the information that One guild is going to aim for the guild house of the Crusader guild. Don't be too blatant about it, and be very secretive…… make it so that the other part would have to spend some effort to find this out. Is that possible?"
"Yes, it is."
Sanghyuk used both Gather information and Manipulate information before standing up.
'If you want a fight, I'll give you one.'
Sanghyuk had a smile on his face.
In the first place, there was no reason for him to avoid this guild war. It may look on the surface like a 1 vs many and was disadvantageous to Sanghyuk in every way…… but that was only in a simple calculation that did not consider Sanghyuk's overwhelming skills.
In fact, there were more things Sanghyuk could do precisely because he was alone.
"For now…… let's give them a simple greeting, eh?"
He wouldn't decline a fight that walked into him. That was his way.

The Crusader guild was at level 5, and the number of members they had was nearly 400, which was the limit on the number of members at level 5.
They did declare war on the One guild, but didn't show any movement just yet. It wasn't like the One guild was something they could find just because they looked for it.
As they were known to have gone to the Heroic Lands, it would be practically impossible for them to find them in the Land of Dusk or the Hellfire Desert.
In any case, the Crusaders were planning to look for One guild in their broadcast 12 hours later along with a large-scale hunt-to-kill order.
Even if they did not manage to find him, they had to make a large commotion in order to attract attention, and also claim that the One guild had run due to fear.
However, that was just what they thought.
They thought that they were the ones on top of this war…… but that was a big mistake.

'The main playing field of the Crusaders is the western city of the Hellfire Desert, Moongram……. Their guild house is still in the Land of Dusk since they hadn't transferred yet, but the majority of the Crusader members act with here as the base, huh?'
Ilya's first report had some simple pieces of information, but the quality of that information was in no way low.
Sanghyuk closed the report window and had a look around. Moongram was the coolest place in Hellfire Desert, so the heat of the desert could barely be felt. Since it was night right now, the heat couldn't be felt at all.
Perhaps due to that, the users preferred Moongram the most out of all the cities in Hellfire Desert.
Before Sanghyuk entered Moongram, he first changed some of the recording settings.
'Set it to night mode…… and if the resolution is lacking, I can just enhance it later, right?'
If the Crusaders were preparing for tomorrow's broadcast, Sanghyuk was planning to create a video today and broadcast it tomorrow.
'Let's see…… in a situation like this, Blake should be the one appearing, right?'
Sanghyuk equipped the Shadow Duke of Falcon title on the postfix position and called out the avatar 'Blake'.
Paah!
Sanghyuk disappeared in an instant and Blake replaced him.
'Well, then. Shall I start?'
Sanghyuk opened the guild management window and accepted the declaration of war from Crusader.

You have accepted the guild, Crusader's, declaration of war.
Starting now, guild, One, and guild, Crusader, will be in a hostile relationship and free battle mode will be enabled between the two.

With that, Mutou, the guild master of Crusader, would have been notified that he had accepted the guild war, but the problem was that it wasn't transmitted to all the guild members.

The users of Crusader enjoyed their game like they always did. Although a declaration of war was given, the management-level personnel had said that there was no need to be nervous since it wasn't like the One guild had accepted it anyway.
They judged that they only needed to be nervous about tomorrow's regular broadcast and get ready for that.
As such, the guild members were walking around the city streets of Moongram very freely.
"Since we're never going to hunt anymore starting tomorrow once the hunt-to-kill order is out, so let's just level up today."
A normal member of the Crusader guild, Izumi, was close to leveling up, and asked another ordinary member of the guild, Asano, who was also a friend in real life, to carry him a little.
"How much do you have left? I need to leave later."
"I think 30 minutes in the cactus forest will be enough."
"Hmm……. Okay. Then it's just 30 minutes, okay?"
"Thanks, you're my best friend."
"Then treat me to something later."
Izumi was able to enter the Crusader guild that he dreamed of, thanks to Asano's recommendation, as he had a much higher level. Thanks to that, he focused on the game a lot nowadays, and tried his best to become a user fit to become a Crusader.
Though, the only thing he could do was to level up, but in any case, Izumi was trying his best.
"Then let's go right n-"
Spah! Slice!
Asano was about to turn around and leave Moongram. However, not only was he not able to turn around, he couldn't even finish his words.
Asano suddenly collapsed sideways. At that moment, Izumi was about to scream due to the sudden turn of events, but a sword pierced his mouth before he could.
Paah, ruch!"
"Krrrrgh!"
Asano was sliced in two by a single slash, while Izumi was decapitated by a simple stab.
The sword that suddenly came from the darkness defeated the two users with two simple actions.

'Blake' of One guild has defeated 'Lone Wolf' of Crusader guild.
'Blake' of One guild has defeated 'Samuraizumi' of Crusader guild.

Two members of Crusader died in the alleys of Moongram, but no one saw what killed them.
Only a single sword suddenly appeared from the darkness, erased the two of them, and disappeared back into the darkness.
A monster walked inside the darks of Moongram.
that monster quickly and accurately devoured the members of Crusader.
Before Crusader could even react properly, they were bitten to death.
That monster was planning to turn Moongram into a gigantic graveyard tonight.

"H, how many?"
Mutou confirmed again with a face of distrust.
"There are 142 confirmed dead…… and there are more calls through the emergency hotline. From that, there seems to be at least 200 that were done in."
"Hmm…… the culprit should be the One guild, right?"
"Yes, seeing as how they were all killed in Moongram, it seems that the people from One guild have gone into hiding and accepted the guild war there and started ambushing."
"Urgh, dammit! If it was any other guild, I would have prepared for this kind of ambush…… to think that even the One guild would stoop to that point……."
Not only Mutou, but all of the management personnel in Crusader thought that the One guild would have no interest in this guild war. Small-scale guilds didn't prefer guild wars normally.
Their leisurely thoughts that stemmed from various causes became a snake that bit back at them.
"You have called for an emergency summon, right?"
"Yes, we have ordered an emergency summon as well as a caution order to all the members of the guild. The order was to move around in groups of at least 7, so they shouldn't be killed without being able to do anything."
"Goddammit!"
Baam!
Mutou slammed on the desk with his fists and shouted.
"What about the broadcast? Is the broadcast ready?"
The live channel's regular broadcast was going to being in an hour. Originally, Mutou thought that he would have plenty of time to leisurely disdain on the One guild and broadcast that.
However, the situation completely changed.
Not to mention any leisurely disdain, he felt as though he would never be able to relieve his frustration if he didn't smash One guild and their members into pieces.
"We're planning to gather all of our members and comb through every bit of the Land of Dusk and the Hellfire Desert. If we poke every single place, then something must pop out, no?"
"Well, they would never be able to hide since this is a guild war. Although they were able to hide like rats until now…… things would change."
Mutou thought that small-elite guilds like the One guild were easy to bash on.
"The assault force is ready, right?"
"Yes. There are 7 groups starting from 1 to 7. There are 14 people per group and are comprised of people with classes that complement each other."
"Then what about the broadcast?"
"Main recorder and a sub recorder was set in each group. Through them, the best footage would be filmed, and I'm going to edit it live and commentate on the broadcast."
Hinaoka, who Mutou trusted the most, was formerly someone who worked with video editing, and did this kind of things well. Mutou had left the live channel up to him.
"Good, then I'll leave you to the broadcast."
"Yes. Aniki just needs to lead group 1 and hunt them down once you see them. Group 1 is the special assault force and the elites of our guild are mostly there."
"Oho, looks like I'll be able to completely stomp on the rats of One guild."
"Then I'll stream that video live…… and we'll be able to tell the world how strong Crusader is."
"Good, very good!"
Mutou nodded with a very satisfied expression. Although he received a blow on the back of his head, at most, it was the deaths of quite a few ordinary guild members. The core members, their elites, were alive and well.
'Small and elite force? I'll tell you that such an idealistic concept will not work in the guild wars of EL.'
Mutou thought that the characteristics of One guild 'small elite' and 'mysterious' would not work at all in guild wars. In the first place, this was the reason he confidently chose to go with noise marketing.
Mutou's confidence.
And the consequential guild war between One and Crusader.
The act 2 to their war began along with the live channel.

*Slash, crunch!*
A blade from the dark decapitated yet another person.
Actually, killing another user instantly in a PvP situation was not an easy feat to do if there was not a lot of level difference between the ones fighting.
This should have been the case especially since the majority of the members of Crusader was around 40.
Defeating such users in a single attack was an abnormal feat. This was what Mutou and the rest of the higher personnel in Crusader missed.
No, not only them, the majority of the killed members forgot about this as well.
Sanghyuk, no, Blake's attack power was not something that an ordinary user could endure. Sanghyuk had an incredible amount of titles that gave percentage boosts to his stats, so his basic stats like strength or agility were insanely high.
On top of that, his equipment was also set up perfectly, with gear that even the highest-ranking players would envy about.
Since Sanghyuk focused most of his ear towards critical hit rates and critical damage, 7 out of 10 attacks were critical strikes.
He had enough power to kill a user with a single strike without a critical, if it did happen to be a critical, the outcome was obvious.
With a critical attack every single thing he attacked died in a single hit, and it was usually a one-hit one-kill even if it was not a critical, but the target was a non-tanker.
There were times when the target endured an attack when it was not a critical. But since the continuing strike would kill the target anyway, there wasn't that much difference to the ones being killed.
One strike, or two strikes at best.
The number of people that Blake crushed through that action was 247.
It was just that the report was late. The ordinary members of Crusader had practically all died by Blake's hands.
*Srr, clack.*
Blake sheathed the Ogreslayer and walked up from the dark.
'There's 50 minutes until the broadcast……. Looks like I should get ready for that then.'
Naturally, channel One had to do their regular broadcast as well. Since he had enough materials for today, he only needed to edit it quickly.
Actually, there weren't that much to edit anyway. In the first place, he was careful in his actions in consideration for the broadcast.
Thanks to that, the footage was almost perfect without any editing at all.
'I got an awesome title through this hunt not to mention contents, so it really is an awesome catch.'
The reason Blake could smile even more pleasantly was not only because he got enough contents for this broadcast.
He had gained another title.
When he killed 200 members of Crusader with a single hit, he acquired a very splendid title.

Title - 'This is one-hit one-kill!'
Grade - unique
Description - You have defeated 200 hostile users in less than one day. And you have not died in the process and you can be called the textbook of one-hit one-kill.
Effects - [Prefix: N/A] [Postfix: N/A] [Constant effect: Those who strike first wins(A): If your first attack to your enemy is a critical strike, the critical damage is amplified by 2.5 times.]

Sanghyuk found about this title only after he got it.
Although there weren't any prefix or postfix affects, the constant effect was awesome.
The critical damage afflicted would be amplified by 2.5 times…… Although it only applied to the first attack, and only applied to critical strikes, its power was frightening once it did activate.
His critical damage was amplified so much already because of his item settings, but if that was yet again amplified by 2.5 times…… Sanghyuk's first strike, as long as it was a critical, would become a frightening blow.
This was a title that suited Sanghyuk more than anyone else. Although it was a unique-grade, it felt like a legendary-grade title to Sanghyuk.
Sanghyuk had acquired a tremendous side benefit and began preparing for his broadcast with a grin on his face.
With the addition of Those who strike first wins(A), Blake's ambushes became even stronger. This meant…… a harder guild war for Crusader.

After the first broadcast, the regular broadcast started 2 days later. In today's regular broadcast, all 30 channels would simultaneously broadcast like they did last time, but starting next week, they would broadcast four times a week and for 2 hours day.
Live channels could decide on their day and hour of their broadcast, and they would decide who would choose first through today's viewing rates.
This was strictly ability-centered.
This was Kim Woonho's style. In any case, due to that reason, the live channels had to prepare a lot for today's broadcast.
If they were pushed back in the rankings in today's broadcast, they may have to deal with permanent losses in the future.
The reason Crusader struggled so hard was also because of this. They had to raise their rank even if they had to do it through noise marketing.
In any case, their initial viewing rates told that their noise marketing had succeeded to some extent.
Well, that was after leaving aside channel One who got 2 million viewers watching within the first 10 minutes of the broadcast.
Other than channel One, the rest were just about the same, and the one with the most number of viewers was channel Rising.
They acquired 300 thousand views in 10 minutes and confirmed their abilities. However, Crusader attracted 150 thousand in 10 minutes.
The other channels had around 100 thousand, and the lower-ranking channels maintained around 10 to 20 thousand. Considering that, Crusader's noise marketing could be considered very successful.
In channel Crusader, the Crusader guild had naturally sent out hunt-to-kill orders and their users were looking for the One guild. However, channel One showed Blake's massacre footage that happened the night before
One was a livestream without a single proper battle, while the other was a recorded footage but was also a massacre video of Blake doing instakills.
Obviously, the reactions were split as well.

[What the heck? This looks like they'll do nothing at this rate.]
[Man, I thought they were finally going to pop One guild's bubble, but there's nothing here at all.]
[When are you going to fight?]
[Right now, channel One is broadcasting a Crusader massacre video. Oh, this is so funny. What kind of comedy is this?]
[This is so boring. How long are you going to do this?]
[I'm going back to channel One. These guys are screwed no matter how you look at it.]
[I'm in the wrong for expecting anything from these guys.]
[They aren't Crusaders, they are bubblesaders.]
……
……

This was the reaction on channel Crusader, while on channel One…….

[Wow, as expected of Blake! Awesome!]
[No matter how I look at it, the best PvP player of EL is Blake.]
[How can he kill them in a single strike like that? Guys, is that so easy to do?]
[Bullshit…… let this bro explain it in simple terms. Usually, there must be a level gap of around 30 for such a thing to happen. But the crusader guys that are being massacred right now should be at level 40 at least…… then does that mean Blake is level 70? That doesn't make sense. It's just that Blake is goddamn OP.]
[Slaughterer Blake! What the heck. There's no need for the entire One guild to come. Blake is taking care of this all by himself.]
[A hard carry from the slaughterer!]
[This is really awesome. A friend of mine is watching channel Crusader next to me, but those guys look screwed already.
[The viewer numbers on Crusader started falling.]
[They were practically agro-ing in the first place. So it's no wonder that happened.]
[Channel One is da best! Let's hit 10 million today, yeah?]
[10 million is probably impossible. The first broadcast only went up that high due to all the ads and opening events…… I expect around 6 to 7 million viewers for today.]
[Here comes shit-sperts again.] (T/N: shit+experts, I made this up on the spot)
[Man, those predictors are so lame!]
……
……

Just like what the reactions told, channel One's viewers kept increasing and channel Crusader kept losing them.
Crusader had burned a fire with a dangerous fuel known as agro. However, they started being devoured by their own fire.

Chapter end