The vanguard of players closed the distance to the man in black clothes, from twenty paces to ten, in an instant.
And then.
Fsssh!
Whoosh—!
A light shattered.
'…Huh?'
Zero's eyes narrowed.
There was no shout, no sound of impact.
Where the melee dealer at the very front had been, white fragments burst forth and scattered.
The death effect.
A light he had seen at least ten thousand times.
But…
"…"
Even Zero, the number one-ranked player, could not discern what had happened in the interval before it appeared.
No damage numbers, no hit confirmations appeared.
They were charging in perfectly fine one frame, and then turned to dust in droves the next.
The man in black clothes stood in the same spot, in the same stance.
Even the tip of his sword, pointing downward, was identical to a moment ago.
"That new boss bastard is crazy strong! Everyone, use your items without holding back!"
"Valhalla, take the lead! Front line, charge in!"
"Tempest! Don't let them steal the last hit, everyone get in there!"
"Knights of the Holy Grail, we'll get the server first!"
The guilds that had made a name for themselves on the server shouted their calls and poured in.
Flag effects soared from all directions, and the light of buffs swept over the front lines.
An even greater number of players pushed into the spot where their comrades had just turned to dust without a sound.
That was the signal.
Since they charged in large numbers, they also died in droves.
Popopopow!
Shwaaaaa—!
Wherever the man walked, people turned into light and vanished.
Not even a slashing motion was visible.
A single brush, and their outlines crumbled into dust and flew away.
On the ground, instead of corpses, only the remnants of half-cast skills rolled about.
Not a single drop of blood splattered.
That was because in this game, you scattered into gray dust when you died.
But that dust was rising too quickly, and too much of it.
'…Is this really an event?'
Zero's feet, about to step forward, hesitated.
If it was an event, there had to be a strategy.
There would be patterns, phases, and a correct answer.
Because the company designed it that way.
However, the man in black seemed to show none of that.
The same motion never appeared more than once.
When attacked from the left, sometimes his left hand would respond, other times his right.
When his back was targeted, the tip of his sword would answer erratically without him even turning around.
It wasn't an AI following a behavior tree.
It was reading the enemy on the spot and choosing the best course of action each time…
'…A person?'
But he immediately erased the word 'person' from his mind.
If it was a user, there would definitely be an ID, and it was impossible for him not to know it.
Then…
'A GM?'
But after a moment's thought, it couldn't be a GM either.
If it were a GM, how would they handle the aftermath of doing something like this so openly?
And if they wanted to do it secretly, they would have created a temporary ID like a user and acted that way.
'Then… what in the world are those things?!'
He couldn't understand.
The important thing was whether those things were new users or GMs, whether they could be defeated or not.
That was the immediate problem.
KABOOM!
Pow-pow!
Shwaaaak—!
The front line collapsed again.
A group that had swung wide to the left poured toward the man's flank.
A dozen or so melee dealers focused their firepower on one spot, a coordinated attack to forcibly chip away the health of an unreleased entity.
It was a textbook strategy, one that Zero himself had used hundreds of times.
But the man didn't even turn his head in that direction.
The tip of his foot seemed to drag across the ground once, and in the next moment, the man was standing in the middle of that group.
There was no teleport effect, no afterimage, no movement motion.
A dot that had been on one side was simply moved to the other.
The process in between was completely absent.
A dozen or so people turned gray in an instant.
Shhhhhh—.
'…Blink?'
No. Blink had a cooldown, a range, and most importantly, a casting motion.
This was simply being there, and then being here.
A 'skill' that didn't exist in any skill tree.
The ranged dealers positioned at the back finally opened fire.
Arrows, bullets, and magic projectiles rained down in hundreds of streams toward the lone man.
It was excessive firepower to take down one person, but against a never-before-seen 'new' entity, showering it with attacks was the standard procedure.
That was the basic strategy in this game.
And in response…
The man simply walked.
The projectiles that rained down stopped in front of the man.
They weren't blocked.
They weren't deflected.
No defense effect, no hit confirmation, no nullification message appeared.
The moment they reached the man, they all lost their shape and disintegrated, their trajectories dissolving.
"…?!"
Zero doubted his own eyes.
A judgment where a projectile vanishes with '0 resistance' did not exist in this game.
It had to be hit, blocked, or dodged.
One of the three.
A fourth option did not exist.
No, it shouldn't have existed.
'Is that some kind of… area-of-effect nullification buff?'
Buffs had a duration, and when they ended, a window of opportunity appeared.
Zero waited for that opening.
He counted to three.
Nothing changed.
He counted again.
Nothing changed.
In that time, hundreds, thousands of users had already evaporated.
And yet, the opening never appeared.
It wasn't something that ended; it was clearly something that was always on, never having been turned on or off in the first place.
Meanwhile, another slaughter was unfolding next to the man.
The second 'new' entity with no ID.
A Crimson Silhouette with festering skin stirred frantically through the crowd of users.
People crumbled into gray wherever its fingertips touched, just like with the man in black, but the manner of killing was different.
If a line of people was cleanly extinguished when the man in black passed by once, the other one caused those it touched to decay and crumble from the inside out.
The human form collapsed sluggishly before turning gray, and that slowness made it all the more grotesque.
And the strange thing was that the two newly added 'gods' were mutually hostile.
That reddish thing would stop cutting down users and repeatedly reach out toward the man in black.
Whether it was trying to snatch his prey or aiming for the man himself.
The two were undoubtedly enemies.
Even this was unprecedented.
If these two were truly a newly added type of god mob, shouldn't they only target users?
But they were attacking each other?
Zero's judgment was increasingly leaning toward the possibility that they weren't mobs at all.
Shwaaa!
Fssst—!
Even while slaughtering users, they exchanged blows with each other.
Once, the reddish one shot a cluster of blood-red energy into the man in black's blind spot behind him.
The man, without turning, simply flicked his wrist back once, and the cluster dissolved and scattered before it could reach him.
The scattered remnants then swept away dozens of charging users, turning them gray all at once.
'…Crazy.'
Amidst the continuous stream of absurd scenes, even as Zero stood completely still, the camp below was growing hotter and hotter.
Despite them dying indiscriminately, the number of people was not decreasing but growing exponentially.
Lured by rumors of an event, people who had set their coordinates were ceaselessly dropping in via teleport, and with each arrival, pillars of light rose and fell in all directions.
The number of people, which had been in the tens of thousands, had multiplied several times over.
Even as hundreds from that multiplied number vanished into gray, the empty spaces were immediately filled by newcomers.
No one was running away.
The reason was all there in the chat window.
—They're fighting each other, sweet lol. Let's get the spoils.
—If there are two unreleased ones, isn't that double the drops?
—Someone just needs to get the last hit.
Just the last hit.
They were watching death and calculating the last hit.
Zero glanced at the chat window and then looked away.
It was nothing new.
This world was always like this.
'Because even if you die, you're not really dead.'
As he looked away, a corner of the arena caught his eye.
That place had been in an uproar for a while now, too.
The boss that the Zero-to-Hundred Guild had hunted hundreds of times.
The Azure Gold Qilin.
The true master of this place, the Red Arena.
Having vanished for six days, it had returned looking like it had been chased out, and users were swarming around it like ants.
Even while the two new entities were causing such a ruckus, the players over there were ceaselessly pouring arrows and balls of light onto it.
It was only natural.
Half of its five-colored scales had fallen off, and a blue energy was slowly filling the scraped spots.
The master of the server's most expensive drop item, with less than half its health left.
While there seemed to be no answer for the two new ones, there was an answer for that one.
The players were not about to leave alone a guaranteed reward that had rolled onto a board they had long been striking out on.
But it was strange.
Thud-thud-thud!
Papapak!
Kaboom—!
The massive body staggered each time arrows struck, and balls of light exploded.
That was all.
Despite being unilaterally battered by that firepower, the boss neither died nor turned away.
Only a blue energy slowly circulated over its scraped scales.
It was not the recovery of the Azure Gold Qilin that Zero knew, nor the counterattack of the Azure Gold Qilin that he knew.
Zero focused his vision in that direction.
He knew the next scene by heart.
A battered boss attacks the one with the highest aggro first.
Starting with the one who hit it the hardest, in the assigned order, according to the programmed pattern.
That's how bosses are made.
The Qilin turned its head.
But…
There was no order anymore.
No, it looked as if it had lost the order.
There was no distinction between those who had dealt damage and those who hadn't.
It just started with whatever was in front of its eyes.
Its massive horn swept sideways once, and six or seven players were launched into the air before scattering into gray.
Wherever its hooves landed, users were crushed and scattered into dust.
It didn't discriminate between those who shot arrows, those who were watching, or those who were running away.
Without regard for aggro or threat, it attacked whatever was in front of it.
Zero knew that boss better than anyone.
It was an opponent he had faced hundreds of times, one whose horn's turning direction he had memorized.
That Qilin was now doing something that wasn't in any of the movement patterns he had memorized from hunting it hundreds of times.
'Is that one… broken too?'
The Qilin's head finally turned toward the man in black.
Its horn stood erect.
The Qilin's massive body kicked off the ground and shot forward in a straight line.
A charge-type rushing skill.
The very skill that had pushed back all twenty elites of the Zero-to-Hundred Guild, even when they had set up a barrier.
The man in black did not dodge.
Zero waited for the man to disappear from that spot.
Just like before, for the dot on one side to be moved to the other.
But this time, he didn't.
The man sidestepped by just half a pace.
Just enough for the tip of the horn to miss.
Then he raised the sword he held loosely and drew it once across the flank of the massive, passing body of the Azure Gold Qilin.
There wasn't even a clang.
No cut mark was visible.
Just one of the scales covering the Qilin's body simply crumbled and fell off where the man's sword had passed.
The charge, having missed, rammed into empty space.
The massive body, unable to handle its own momentum, slid for a long time across the red ground.
Zero replayed that single move in his mind several times.
No party had ever taken that charge head-on.
Everyone rolled to the side to dodge, and if they dodged, they were trampled by the follow-up hooves.
But the man neither rolled to dodge nor blocked.
He deflected the charge with half a step.
And in the process, he even stripped off a scale.
Damage numbers didn't appear this time either.
That slide itself was an area-of-effect attack.
Hundreds of users in the path of the massive body's sweep were caught before they could even dodge.
Those crushed were pulverized, and those sent flying turned gray in mid-air.
The death log was faster than the shouts to dodge.
At the end of the slide, the Qilin dug its hooves into the ground as if biting it, and jerked its head around.
This time, it was toward the Crimson Silhouette.
The Qilin raised its mane.
A bundle of white fur spread wide and swept over the front of the new reddish boss.
It was a clump twice the width of a person, each strand of fur standing on end like a sword.
The reddish boss did not move aside.
It showed annoyance.
Several blood-red tendrils extended from its fingertips and met the bristling clump of fur head-on.
Wherever they touched, the white fur decayed into an ashen color and fell off, and the blood-red tendrils were also ground apart by the mane and scattered.
Both were repelled without any gain.
The Qilin was pushed one step to the side, and the reddish thing was dragged backward.
Zero stared blankly at the scene.
The two so-called new bosses were trading blows head-on with the field boss.
To be precise, it felt like a stage was being set for the three of them to fight to the death amongst themselves.
That reddish thing was aiming for the man in black, and the Qilin was charging at both of them indiscriminately, whatever got in its way.
No one was on anyone's side.
They were just baring their fangs at each other.
The chat window had once again become noisy and chaotic.
—The bosses are fighting each other lololol
—Hey, the three of them are fighting each other.
As soon as the reddish thing pushed the Qilin back a step, it turned back toward the man in black.
This time, it wasn't aiming for his back.
It was a frontal assault.
Its two festering hands came together, and a blood-red mass condensed between them.
Then it erased the distance.
The space between them simply disappeared, and the reddish thing thrust the mass at the man in black from point-blank range.
The man in black raised his sword to meet it head-on.
The blood-red mass and the black sword locked together.
This time, even the man's sword couldn't unravel it in a single move.
The reddish thing pushed, and the man held his ground.
Where they met, without light or sound, the surrounding red ground caved inward.
For a moment, a very brief moment, the two 'nameless bosses' were evenly matched.
Zero held his breath.
For the first time, the man in black hadn't been able to finish it in one move.
The stalemate was broken not because of a move from either of them, but because a horde of users squeezed in between them.
Those who charged in aiming for the last hit poured between the two, and the engagement was disrupted.
The blood-red mass scattered, sweeping away the intervening group in gray, and the man in black and the reddish thing used the opening to separate from each other and create distance again.
The fight hadn't been decided.
The horde had just separated them.
Now, the three were entangled in the middle of the Red Arena.
The man in black was fending off the reddish boss even with his back to it, and the reddish boss, while reaching for the man, would turn to face the Qilin when it charged.
The Qilin didn't discriminate between the two, trampling even the users who stood between them.
The three repeatedly gathered and scattered, each aiming for the other two.
In the very middle of it all were the users.
A brush from the man in black, and a line was cleanly extinguished.
A touch from the reddish boss, and they decayed and crumbled from within.
Under the Qilin's hooves, they were crushed into dust.
There were three paths to death, and all three were operating simultaneously in one place.
Those who squeezed in, aiming for the last hit, were instead torn apart in three directions, far from getting any last hit.
Zero still couldn't figure out what was what, or how things were unfolding.
However, he could be certain of one thing.
This was not an event.
It couldn't be an event.
If it were a raid designed by the company, the three bosses should have either coordinated to fight the users or taken turns attacking in different phases.
There should have been a set script.
But those three were trying to devour each other.
The users were just scraps caught in the crossfire as the three tore at each other.
'This is just… a complete mess.'
Two new bosses and one broken field boss.
What the three of them were creating wasn't a raid to be conquered, but a bloodbath where only those who interfered died.
—Uh, wait, are we not supposed to be fighting this? It's too hard…
—The three of them are killing each other, so we just have to wait, right?
—But if we leave, what about the drops?
Two of them are new and final-boss level.
Even in that pandemonium, Zero's eyes kept turning to one side.
Zero looked at the man again.
To be precise, he was trying to 'read' the man.
Wasn't he the world's number one ranker in the world's top game?
Every boss had a pattern.
It had a pre-delay, a post-delay, a blind spot, and a cooldown.
Reading those was the job of someone at the top.
There must be some fixed pattern, form, or skill order within that erratic behavior!
…But even after watching for a long time, there was nothing to read from the man.
Whether they charged from the left or aimed for his back, the answer always came first.
When a group swarmed him, sometimes he would be in their midst, other times he would teleport far away.
When arrows rained down, sometimes he would walk into them and scatter them, and when facing magic, he would sometimes dissolve it all on the spot.
When the Qilin charged, sometimes he would deflect it with half a step, and other times he would blast it away with a massive laser-like beam from his sword.
When the reddish boss collided with him head-on, he would meet it, dodge it, or deal with it in whatever way he pleased.
The same solution never appeared twice.
His move was different for every situation, and it was always the correct one.
He wasn't following a set decision tree; he was choosing anew on the spot every time.
It wasn't that there was no pre-delay; there was no pattern from which to read a pre-delay.
'That thing…'
That person… whether a user, a new boss, or anything else, there was no answer to him within the world of GOR.
Just then.
"…Hey, he's here! A GM is here!"
A scream-like cheer erupted from one side of the camp.