Chapter 3: The Turning Point (2)

The game was vast—filled with a deep story, countless characters, and endless secrets.

The power system itself was incredible.

Combat styles varied wildly from player to player.

Every puzzle.

Every corner.

Every boss.

Each carried its own story.

The game was truly bizarre ..

and extraordinary.

“Just… how did Ishizaki even manage to create something like this?”

Setting aside its revolting difficulty, Ordeal was a genuine marvel.

Ethan kept trying again and again—spending hundreds of hours just to conquer certain bosses.

He poured all of his time into the game, desperately trying to reach its end.

The game began to heavily affect his life.

And it took a severe toll on his channel.

After all, no one enjoyed watching someone fight the same boss thousands of times—

only to barely defeat it in the end.

“Try another game.”

“Give up. Ordeal isn’t meant to be beaten.”

“The streams are getting boring. When are you going to stop playing Ordeal?”

These comments began appearing frequently in Ethan’s streams.

Every time.

He ignored them.

But the damage had already been done.

Slowly—

he began losing followers, one by one.

Viewers: 1,320

MrTrashKim:

Just give up, Moon. At this rate, trying to finish this game is only going to destroy your channel.

BlackRose:

It isn’t worth all this effort. There are dozens of other games that deserve your time—and I’m sure they’d attract far more viewers.

Even his most loyal supporters begged him to stop.

But Ethan never budged.

He kept trying—

as time slipped through his fingers.

Viewers: 832

VenusPanties:

Why are you trying this hard? What are you even trying to prove?

He lost again.

And again.

So many times that the viewers themselves lost count of how often his character died.

More and more people began to wonder why Ethan kept pushing forward so desperately.

Despite investing an absurd amount of time, he never came close to finishing the game.

Viewers: 640

MrTrashKim:

Is it the reward? If that’s the reason, then just give up already. It’s obviously a scam.

BlackRose:

It isn’t worth this level of devotion. Stop. Give up. Start another game instead.

Every stream.

Every attempt.

Every defeat.

Every time death claimed him inside the game—

the shadow of surrender loomed on the horizon.

But Ethan rejected it to the very end.

At some point, it stopped being about money.

It stopped being about the reward.

It became something far greater.

For Ethan—the man who had never accomplished anything in his life.

The failure who had given up time and time again halfway through—

this game became a crossroads.

“I can’t stop…

and I won’t give up.”

He tried to finish the game.

He lost.

And lost.

And lost again.

Loss after loss after loss—without end.

“If I give up here… I feel like I won’t be able to accomplish anything for the rest of my life.”

This was his only chance.

His last hope.

The lighthouse he clung to until the very end.

Defeats piled up ..

countless, overwhelming, suffocating.

But among hundreds—among thousands—of losses…

Ethan won once.

Just once every few thousand defeats.

But that single victory was enough to push him forward—enough to keep conquering a game that millions had abandoned.

Viewers: 457

VenusPanties:

What if you keep losing? What will you do if you can’t do it?

“I’ll lose again. And again.

Victory isn’t given to those who fear defeat—

it’s given to those who refuse to stop.”

…

Viewers: 279

MrTrashKim:

Why do you insist on walking the hardest path… even when you know it might lead to your end?

“Because easy paths don’t lead anywhere worth going.”

…

Viewers: 150

The channel was dying.

And The Moon You had lost his shine.

But he never stopped playing Ordeal.

It had become a fundamental part of his life … its world pulling him further and further away.

“No matter what awaits me at the end…

I just want to enjoy this journey while I still can.”

Despite its absolute, merciless difficulty, Ordeal carried countless messages beneath its breathtaking visuals.

Its living characters.

Its dark bosses who put him through hell.

Viewers: 100

SquareDick:

You know what… screw everything. I’m with you until the end. Just finish this damn game.

MrTrashKim:

Let’s just enjoy the journey—and see where it takes us.

VenusPanties:

Even if everyone else stops watching, I’ll stay here. So don’t worry—keep conquering this game!

…

Despite the collapse of the channel, a handful of loyal supporters remained.

They stayed—supporting Ethan just enough for him to survive.

And for that ..

he was truly grateful.

Behind those ridiculous usernames—

the ones who watched him die again and again—

were the people closest to Ethan.

Closer than any humans he had ever interacted with in his entire life.

And so ..

time passed swiftly.

Two years vanished in the blink of an eye.

Two years Ethan spent living inside a game the world had abandoned.

And after a long, brutal struggle ..

he reached what no one before him ever had.

He reached the final boss.

An unprecedented achievement .. one most believed to be impossible.

Viewers: 5,600

The channel was finally revived.

Curious spectators flooded in, drawn by rumors of Ethan’s impossible progress.

The final boss.

The legendary Night Lord—whispered about in rumors, his name echoing since the very beginning of Ordeal.

The last enemy.

Beyond him—

the finish line awaited.

It had taken two full years to reach this point.

But the end was close.

For a moment—

everyone watching believed he would finally finish the game.

But everything changed the instant Ethan entered the battlefield.

His screen darkened immediately ..

and a grotesque, echoing laugh thundered through the speakers.

A sound so vile that everyone who heard it fell silent.

“YOU DIED.”

Only a few seconds had passed since the battle began, yet that blood-red message filled the screen—making Ethan realize that he had already lost.

The Night Lord had killed him in a single blow.

A strike he hadn’t even properly seen.

It was so absurd that Ethan began to laugh unconsciously.

“Are you telling me that after all my levels—after all my abilities and weapons—I died in one hit?”

The chat box exploded as well, the viewers’ patience finally overflowing.

The entire game stood on one side of the scale ..

and the final boss alone stood on the other.

That wasn’t a boss.

It was a living nightmare ..

a dark calamity that had spread its curse across every living being.

The Night Lord wasn’t just a rendered monster.

He was an entity with a crushing presence—one whose weight reached even Ethan himself.

The journey.

The struggles.

The story.

The riddles.

The shadows of Ordeal and its epics—

all of them had taken root deep inside Ethan.

As he fought the final boss, fragments of the game’s world echoed around him—memories of every sweet and bitter moment he had lived through.

The final battle was hell itself.

The Night Lord alone demanded as much time and as many attempts as the rest of the game combined.

His dialogue was profound.

Every scene involving him was so overwhelmingly impressive that chills ran through everyone watching.

The sound of his laughter.

The tone of his voice.

The way he fought.

He felt like a character from another world—

not something born from a video game.

He was truly…

“Magnificent.”

Ethan whispered the word, as something strange brushed against his heart—

and his soul.

After a merciless struggle.

After endless attempts ..

Ethan froze in place.

The controller slipped from his hands.

And then ..

his screen lit up brighter than it ever had before.

Carrying with it a message he never thought he would see with his own eyes.

[NIGHTMARE SLAIN]

A special message—one that appeared only once in the entire game.

A message whose appearance meant that the nightmare had finally ended.

That the Night Lord had fallen at last.

“I… defeated him,” Ethan whispered softly, dark circles forming beneath his eyes.

“I defeated him.”

He repeated the words ..

as everything around him stood still.

“I did it.”

With trembling hands, Ethan leaned back.

“I finished it.”

“I finished Ordeal.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep