I Reincarnated into a Game Filled with Mods

“Who’s there!”

As soon as I stepped into the upper floor, a shrill shout pierced the air. I froze in place. Two guys were approaching, wielding crude clubs and wearing nothing but loincloths like mine.

They looked just like the characters from the game. Soon enough, the third one lurking behind would join them.

They squinted at me, clad only in a loincloth like them, and relaxed their guard slightly while exchanging words.

“What’s that guy? Is he one of us?”

“Since he came up from below, that’s possible.”

“But Jack checked everything earlier, right?”

“That guy is always slippery. He might’ve just said there was no one after vaguely checking.”

“Ugh, that idiot. Jack! Jack! Get out here!”

Since I had just appeared from the lowest level of the prison and was dressed just like them, they seemed to be mistaking me for a fellow prisoner stuck in the bottom level.

Such dialogue didn’t exist in the game. The moment you were spotted, they just rushed in.

As the one on the left called out Jack’s name anxiously, another guy stepped out from behind a pillar.

“What now?”

“What do you mean, what? I told you to check properly without slacking off! Someone crawled out from down there; what do you think?”

“What?”

The look on Jack’s face twisted into all sorts of contortions as he stared at me. Then, he clicked his tongue and began swinging the crude wooden club around as he approached me.

“Fine, fine. We just need to deal with it, right?”

‘Didn’t they mistake me for a fellow prisoner?’

With that first conversation, I thought maybe I could slip by without fighting, but judging by their lack of any intention to stop him from attacking me, it seemed I was mistaken.

He quickly closed the distance. If the attack pattern was just like in the game, it was obvious how the first strike would come. I glanced back just in case, focusing on the arm holding the weapon.

The arm was raised.

‘Now.’

Remembering the sensation of my character moving backward as I hit the keyboard, I swiftly took two steps back. Just as I dodged, the club sliced through the air.

“Whoa?”

His body lurched forward. Seizing the opportunity, I quickly swung my club at his head. Thwack! A crisp sound echoed. Due to the impact, he stumbled, his eyes half-lidded, almost ready to collapse forward.

In the game, it took three hits to kill him anyway. Without giving him a chance to recover, I swiftly struck twice more, and his off-balance body teetered before rolling down the stairs.

Thud! Thud!

‘Good thing nothing’s changed.’

The pattern and situation lined up perfectly. The only difference was that the game never implemented the motion of rolling down the stairs like that.

For some reason, even though I just killed a person, I didn’t feel any significant emotion. It felt far more like I dealt with a mob in the game than actually killing a person.

“This bastard!”

As I contemplated the corpse that had rolled down the stairs, the other two cursed and leaped at me simultaneously.

I rolled to dodge the first incoming attack and swung down at their backs. The one hit directly by my attack staggered for a moment, which allowed me to roll again and swing my arm. This time, I hit them again.

With two consecutive blows in an instant, the guy couldn’t regain his focus. I swung one last time, and the club slammed against his head with a far duller sound than before.

He fell heavily to the ground and lay there, unmoving.

Witnessing the scene where both companions dropped dead in an instant, the last one charged at me as if in desperation. Of course, he received the same treatment, getting knocked out flat on the floor after taking three hits.

‘It’s a pity there’s no UI.’

It seems that the mobs appearing here died with three regular hits based on the Forsaken context, and even their placements and appearances were the same. The corpses hadn’t vanished, but that was inconsequential.

However, the complete absence of any UI was quite disappointing.

That meant there would be no displays for health, mana, stamina, combat fatigue, and later stats or even quick slots for consumables when I unlock them.

I didn’t even expect an enemy health bar, but it would have been nice to have a way to accurately gauge those essentials.

Just moments ago, rolling around had likely consumed stamina and piled up combat fatigue, but I had no way of determining the specific amounts.

I had a rough estimate in my head. I knew that rolling three times would deplete the stamina bar for a Forsaken’s first run.

‘I’ll need to look into it in more detail later.’

Leaving the sprawled-out prisoners behind, I headed for the door on the opposite side of the stairs. Beyond that door was a prisoner serving as the mid-boss of the Tutorial Area, the leader of the now knocked-out ones.

The real boss was, of course, the Human Butcher I encountered first.

He was nothing special. His weapon was just a wooden club, and his patterns were as simple as they come. I vaguely remembered being able to take him down with around ten regular hits.

When I opened the door, I saw a massive human silhouette beyond. A muscular giant standing over two meters tall.

He wielded a splendid steel sword.

“……?”

Wait a minute.

“Hell no.”

Sitting back against the pillar, I chuckled hollowly, looking at the shattered corpse of the muscular giant behind me.

“Is this mod still in effect?”

It was frustrating beyond belief.

If this had been a vanilla state with no mods at all, then due to my past experiences, it would have been a slight challenge at the very beginning, but after taking down a couple of bosses, the path would have opened up smoothly.

I was the guy who had cleared Brightest Darkness 4 while performing all kinds of ridiculous feats like blindfolded runs, playing with the mouse and keyboard backward, using my feet, and no-hit, no-damage clears.

But that wasn’t the case anymore.

Realizing that the ‘Darkest Light’ mod installed just before I got sucked into the game was still in effect left me dumbfounded, only smirking as a response.

I picked up the steel sword that the mid-boss had been wielding and inspected it. No matter how I looked at it, it was a steel sword, not a wooden club. It was exactly what was wielded in the Darkest Light mod.

‘This is insane.’

The Darkest Light mod was notorious for being incredibly brutal, capable of turning someone like me—with playtime in the five-digit range—back into a newbie in an instant.

To be sucked into the game with something like that active? I was at a loss for words.

‘First, defeating the Human Butcher is going to be a huge task.’

Thinking of the Human Butcher who would appear immediately after leaving the lowest level of the underground prison made me sigh involuntarily. My original plan was to take him down.

His first appearance had such a tremendous impact that it terrified players, but even under the Enemy Enhancement Mod, he only had about six patterns total.

Moreover, all of his patterns were slow, making it really easy to evade with rolls.

He was merely called a gatekeeper in the early game for new players, but once you reached the second run, you could easily scoff and take him down.

The problem was that under the Enemy Enhancement Mod, touching him at all meant instant death.

No, this wasn’t just a problem with the Human Butcher. The fact that everything, including all boss and mid-boss enemies, would instantly kill you with just a touch meant I had to defeat the Human Butcher even more urgently.

‘That weapon is a must-have.’

The reason I was keen on taking down the Human Butcher was that he definitely dropped a weapon.

A weapon named ‘Blood-Stained Sword’ that held almost cheats-like performance until the mid-game. The difference between using it early on and not was like heaven and earth.

Even in vanilla, obtaining it would drastically improve the mid-game experience, but in the Darkest Light Mod, it was practically essential.

Trying to progress through the early stages without the Blood-Stained Sword would be equivalent to committing suicide.

It didn’t matter if I had armor or maxed out health stats; a boss’s attack was guaranteed to one-shot. The random mobs wouldn’t survive even two hits.

If my attacks could finish him off in one blow, I would at least want to hit back just as hard. I might deal one blow, but if he needs five, then that’s just too unfair.

“…….”

Standing at the door leading out of the lowest level of the underground prison, I fidgeted with the doorknob. Just like in the game, the lock was broken, so I could exit anytime.

In Brightest Darkness 4, as soon as I went through that door, the Human Butcher lurking nearby would break through the wall at a perfect timing and chase after the player.

That would lead to a chase sequence around the prison, where I would barely survive thanks to the help of a knight.

On the other hand, I could straightforwardly take him down here.

If I did that, I could completely skip the chase sequence and the subsequent events, directly meeting the knight and exiting the Tutorial Area, a method often favored by speedrunners.

Of course, that was limited to vanilla runs.

If one attempted to speedrun through the Brightest Darkness mode, then just bolting out would be the way to go.

“There’s really no choice.”

Yeah. There was no choice. In the game, I could skip the Blood-Stained Sword and mindlessly reset to take down the bosses with barehands, but now I had to grab everything I could.

Making my decision, I opened the door.

ㅡROOOOOOARRR!!!!!!!!

As soon as I stepped into the hallway, the roar of the Human Butcher echoed from beyond.