Chapter 83 - #83: Despicable Yharnamites!

Chapter 83: Chapter #83: Despicable Yharnamites!

Almost every single streamer who finally acquired their weapons had the exact same thought: they could finally fight back.

But they quickly realized how incredibly wrong they were.

Getting a weapon wasn’t the start of a power fantasy. It was just the beginning of the true ordeal.

"I am literally going to throw up! There is no fucking way this fat guy with the giant axe isn’t a boss!" Zoe slammed her palms down on her desk, her voice cracking with pure rage.

She had just respawned at the Central Yharnam lantern for the twentieth time.

She had barely gotten used to the aggressive "hospitality" of the infected locals.

But just as she descended a hidden staircase, she encountered a monster she felt she would never be able to defeat in her entire lifetime—a massive, black-robed Executioner wielding a colossal greataxe.

Despite his massive size, the Executioner’s attack animations were blindingly fast and relentlessly heavy.

They said the streets of Gotham were rough, but Zoe was quickly realizing that the residents of Yharnam made them look like fucking boy scouts.

"Why would Nova put a boss right at the very beginning of the level?! Does this sadist not care about player retention at all?!" Zoe screamed.

Every single time she ran back to fight the Axe Guy, she was brutally crushed into the cobblestones within seconds.

Bloodborne featured an incredibly unique, highly aggressive combat mechanic called Rally.

When a player took damage, their lost health wouldn’t disappear immediately; it remained on the health bar as a translucent orange line.

If the player rapidly counter-attacked the enemy within a short window, they could siphon that health back through the blood splatter.

But against the Executioner, Zoe didn’t even have a chance to utilize the Rally system. A single, sweeping strike from the giant axe instantly wiped out eighty percent of her total health, throwing her character flat on their back.

The AI of these enemies was incredibly sophisticated. They seemed to actively read the player’s inputs, perfectly timing their heavy sweeps to catch players trying to dodge backwards.

She had been stuck in the exact same starting area of Central Yharnam for an hour. Her bloodstains were scattered across every single square inch of the pavement.

Just as she finally managed to clear out the standard mobs and approach the Axe Guy again, she glanced over at her second monitor.

"Wait... it can’t be... he’s really just an elite mob?!" Zoe read a chat message aloud, her face instantly turning a sickly shade of green.

Seeing her grit her teeth in absolute despair, her stream chat burst into a frenzy of mockery.

[

GamerDad88: knowing Nova, that’s not even a boss. It’s literally just a tanky trash mob.

Toxic_Timmy: skill issue skipping lmao

NoobSlayer_99: It’s okay, just another small death. Standard Zoe gameplay.

LoreMaster: Don’t just spam your gun randomly. Wait for him to raise the axe, and shoot him right as the swing comes down to parry him.

DeskChan: I am fighting for my fucking life down here, please stop hitting me!

]

The gun parry was the mechanical equivalent of the shield parry in Dark Souls or the nail-bounce in Hollow Knight. It was an absolute requirement for mastering the game.

To successfully execute a gun parry, the player had to fire their sidearm at the exact microsecond the enemy’s attack animation entered its downward swing. If timed perfectly, the gunshot would stagger the monster, dropping them to their knees. At that moment, stepping in for a melee attack would trigger a Visceral Attack—a brutally violent, bare-handed riposte that inflicted massive damage.

In Bloodborne, the safety of a heavy shield had been completely abandoned. The fierce, high-risk gun parries forced players into the pocket, perfectly reflecting the tragic, blood-soaked reality of a Hunter.

In the heat of a back-and-forth melee brawl, interspersing point-blank gunfire was incredibly dangerous, but highly rewarding.

It was hard for the viewers to even process that this was just the prologue. As the chat pointed out, Zoe hadn’t even made it five hundred meters away from the first lantern.

"I’m not playing this fucking game anymore!" Zoe completely lost her mind, her eyes red with frustration. The more she looked at the Executioner pacing in the alleyway, the more she wanted to uninstall.

Right as she exhaled a heavy, defeated sigh, a massive, custom animation exploded across her screen.

A viewer had just dropped a massive, $500 top donation.

Seeing the alert fly across the screen, the mentally collapsed Zoe completely froze. The frustrated tears were still glistening in the corners of her eyes, but her hands instantly flew to her chest in a gesture of profound gratitude.

"Oh my god! Thank you so much for the five hundred gifted subs, boss! You are so incredibly generous! Welcome everyone to the best community on the platform!"

A single massive donation instantly evaporated the miserable, heavy atmosphere in the room.

[

someguy: This is exactly why I don’t watch the pro speedrunners. Where else are you going to get content this good?

Luca: As expected of a top-tier streamer. She knows exactly how to work the crowd.

Sascha: True sociopath pivot LMAO

Layfon: The mood swings are insane.

]

With her sanity temporarily restored by the influx of cash, Zoe read a few helpful comments from the chat. The viewers enthusiastically reminded her that the Executioner was entirely optional; she didn’t have to provoke him right now, as most of the other streamers were actively avoiding him too.

But even if you avoided the Axe Guy, it didn’t matter where you went—the infected Yharnamites would swarm you.

They rushed the player with an assortment of crude, inferior weapons. Pitchforks, rusty kitchen knives, lit torches, and jagged wooden planks scavenged from the debris.

A single hit from these makeshift weapons didn’t inflict the same terrifying damage as the Executioner. But the sheer volume of enemies was overwhelming. The absolute second they spotted the protagonist, they would fly into a rabid frenzy, screaming curses as they charged.

It was the Night of the Hunt. Deep in the central plaza, massive groups of residents were gathered around a strange, horrific bonfire. From a distance, players could see a massive, crucified Scourge Beast actively burning in the flames.

This was their twisted festival. The monsters they successfully hunted were lashed to wooden crosses and set ablaze.

Perhaps because the Executioner had effectively provided her with a brutal, high-intensity military boot camp, dealing with the swarming Yharnamites actually felt somewhat manageable now.

But just as Zoe confidently jogged up a narrow flight of stone steps, a Yharnamite silently leaped out from behind a stack of wooden crates and plunged a rusted sickle directly into her back.

"You despicable fucking Yharnamites!" Zoe shrieked, panic-rolling away and wildly swinging her Saw Cleaver to clear the corner.

Hearing her scream, the chat couldn’t help but enthusiastically agree.

[

ApexPredator_00: These locals are dirty as hell. Always hiding in the darkest corners waiting to jump you.

GrimReaper_TTV: You think the ambush is bad? The guy sitting on the balcony shooting a rifle into the crowd is the real opp.

CozyGamerGirl: Just the simple, honest people of Yharnam!

]

After finally clearing the ambush, Zoe walked up to a row of closed doors lining the street. Faint, warm light spilled from the windows, and the game presented a prompt to interact with the NPCs hiding inside.

But the absolute second she knocked, the people inside immediately recognized the scent of an outsider. They violently cursed her, telling her to stay the hell away. There was absolutely no chance they were going to open their doors on the Night of the Hunt.

Some of them even actively laughed at her, mocking the doomed Hunter left to die in the streets.

The infected villagers patrolling the cobblestones were constantly muttering the same venomous rhetoric.

[Away! Away!]

[It’s all your fault!]

[You’re not wanted ’ere!]

When a player first booted up Bloodborne, the oppressive atmosphere was genuinely terrifying. The eerie medical wards, the deranged, xenophobic residents, and the towering, cold Victorian architecture created a flawless sense of dread.

But after dying a dozen times, you became intimately acquainted with the "hospitality" of the Yharnamites. The fear slowly mutated into a hyper-focused, aggressive adrenaline rush.

The locals simply loved to hug and pamper their guests. They preferred to travel in packs of three, and they always brought their beloved pets along to greet you.

And in these "friendly" interactions, the absolute very first thing a player had to deal with was the rabid, skinned hunting dogs.

The movement speed and attack animations of the dogs were vastly superior to the sluggish villagers. Their lunges were incredibly difficult to dodge. If a player didn’t prioritize locking onto the dogs and executing them immediately, the hounds would constantly interrupt their attack animations and stunlock them to death.

Walking down the alleyways, players would notice several hounds locked inside iron cages. But the cages were a complete trap. The second the player aggroed the nearby mobs, the dogs would shatter the iron doors without a single sound and flank the Hunter from behind.

Every single time a player died to a hound, they suddenly remembered the E3 gameplay trailer.

In the promotional footage, the first thing the Hunter did when engaging a crowd was use the extended Saw Cleaver to violently sweep the vicious dogs out of the equation.

Nova hadn’t just released a cinematic trailer; he had literally provided the global player base with a visual strategy guide. They just hadn’t realized it until they were already bleeding out on the cobblestones.

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