Chapter 16

Chapter 16 . A Cave in Mt . Bima (3)

A Skeleton Warrior landed on the back of a deadwood bear, stabbing the bear with its knife . Then, it bounced off like a spring, stepping on the deadwood bear’s back and leaping away .

Kwuoo!

The deadwood bear raised its body up . It was originally to shake off the Skeleton Warrior from its back, but it was a beat too late thanks to the Skeleton Warrior’s quick movement .

After gently landing on the ground, the Skeleton Warrior swiftly moved away, hiding among the trees .

Having lost sight of the Skeleton Warrior, the deadwood bear let out a furious roar while flailing its arm in the air . It was fully showing its anger . What halted its fit of rage was…

Thwack!

A rock . The rock accurately struck the deadwood bear’s nose .

Because of this sudden rock attack, the deadwood bear shook his head in confusion .

Kuo?

By the time it turned towards the direction the rock had come from, Hyrkan had gotten in a baseball wind-up position . The moment the deadwood bear stared at him, Hyrkan threw the rock towards its right eye .

Thwack!

Just like before, the rock hit its mark perfectly .

Kuooo!

The angered deadwood bear lowered his body, standing on its four legs again .

Then, with its mouth opened wide, it charged at Hyrkan . Of course, it didn’t bother to look around .

The Skeleton Warrior moved . Its ran on all four like a wolf, and bit down on the side of the deadwood bear charging mindlessly . The jaw of the blue werewolf-based Skeleton Warrior was strong enough to bite off the deadwood bear’s flesh . Moreover, there were clear marks of the Skeleton Warrior’s bite, as if it had been done tens of times before .

Kuoooo!

Even while letting out a pain-filled roar, the deadwood bear didn’t stop charging towards Hyrkan . But before Hyrkan did anything, it crumbled like a puppet whose strings were cut .

Damage accumulated, and its HP had finally fallen to 0 .

Then .

[You leveled up . ]

Hyrkan reached level 11 .

‘Excellent pace . ’

It took Hyrkan about 5 days to go from level 1 to level 10 . A day hasn’t passed since then, but he had already leveled up .

At the same time, it was an excellent speed, it showed Hyrkan’s real ability and the source of his self-confidence .

‘The level-up speed is as good as when I was a swordsman . ’

His teamwork with the Skeleton Warrior continued to improve through battles .

The blue werewolf upgrade he got proved to be especially useful .

Hyrkan stared at the wolf-skulled Skeleton Warrior . Its wolf-shaped skull wasn’t just a random design . Its biting power was more powerful than he had expected .

Furthermore, its movements were far better than when it was a normal Skeleton Warrior .

‘I knew it took a characteristic of the monster used as its base, but it’s much better than I expected . ’

‘If I use dragon bones as the material, can it use Dragon Breath?’

The potential of the Skeleton Warrior might be far better than Hyrkan expected .

‘Skill proficiency’s going up well, too . ’

With the Skeleton Warrior participating in every battle, it was no surprise that Skeleton Fragment skill proficiency went up quickly .

‘At this rate, I’ll be able to achieve rank E before I hit level 20 . ’

Of course, he didn’t have only good news .

‘The problem is that I don’t have the magic power to use curse magic . ’

When he hit level 10, Hyrkan got another chance to learn a dark magic spell .

What he obtained then was the [Devil Curse] .

It was a useful debuff magic that lowered the target’s stats by 10 percent . However, out of the tens of fights he had, the opportunities he had to use this spell could be counted on one hand .

‘Curse magic are important too…’

The usefulness of curse magic far outranked the usefulness of summoning magic . Why else would curse magicians be a separate category? Besides, curse magic skill tree didn’t just have stat decreasing spells . There were spells that worsened wounds, slowed heals, and showed illusions . Even the Top 30 Guilds would fight over well-made curse magicians . As a result, extremely popular curse magicians didn’t enter guilds but acted as freelancers . Since they didn’t receive any attribute penalties, they could perform above average against any enemy .

‘I can’t even touch body modification yet…’

The Life Vessel magic would be a godsend to make up for his lack of stamina . This required going into body modification skill tree . Unfortunately, he couldn’t even get his hands on a Skin Sewing skill book, the start of body modification skill tree .

‘In the end, it’s all about money . ’

The Skin Sewing skill book, which allowed the user to transplant monster skin to his own, had to be bought with money .

On top of this, Hyrkan had to equip himself with items that made up for his lack of magic power . This also cost money .

Hyrkan was worried because he didn’t have any .

‘Should I just PK?’

He even thought about doing scummy things like PKing .

Of course, he had no plans of doing so . Although he was involved in enough PKs and PvPs to be called the Hero Slaughterer, he had never gone after someone because he was bored or wanted an item .

Against Rankers, he fought fair and square . As for PKs, he had only done it as revenge for attacks against him . He was never the one to actively seek out conflict . In fact, he was outnumbered during most of his PKs . Hyrkan was always the one on the receiving end . Although he never refused a fight and was only satisfied after paying back double, he never enjoyed going after any random, innocent guy .

The fact that Hyrkan had considered such a thing now showed the desperate situation he was in . In truth, he had to show some tangible results within the next three months .

‘Tsk . ’

Hyrkan clicked his tongue .

‘I wish someone would just come provoke me . ’

Realizing the sort of thoughts he was having as he was backed into a corner, Hyrkan shook his head .

‘Agh, I wish some useless, ill-mannered idiots would come provoke me! If I run into just three, I can cut off their wrist and get at least three item . ’

His grumbling ended there .

“Whew . ”

With a deep sigh, Hyrkan got up from his seat .

★★★

[You entered Mt . Bima . ]

Hyrkan stared at the summit of the mountain before him . The faraway mountain peak looked as if a giant column was reaching towards the skies . It was a peculiar mountain peak .

Mt . Bima .

It was an 1800 meter tall mountain, a rather small compared to other mountains in Warlord .

‘It took over a day . ’

Hyrkan had arrived at his destination 26 hours after he left Figur’s Castle .

Actually, if he was determined to arrive at Mt . Bima, he could have done it slightly under 4 hours . But he didn’t need to . There was no time limit on the quest, so he took the liberty to level up and make some videos .

Most importantly, arriving at Mt . Bima didn’t mean his quest was completed .

‘Find a cave here… well, Warlord quests are known to be senseless . ’

The real hardship began now .

How many caves would there be in Mt . Bima? There had to more than one or two . Even if there were just the one, it would be difficult to find a cave in such a large mountain .

Plus, monsters up to level 30 appeared on Mt . Bima . Although it wasn’t a boss monster, it was impossible for the present Hyrkan to kill a level 30 monster . Not unless he was equipped with unique items .

Finally, Hyrkan needed to direct his quest process well .

Quests that gave out the Rising Star title as reward pulled in quite a lot of viewers . Although the number of players, who would obtain the Rising Star title through the same quest, would be extremely low, people naturally tended to hold onto potential lottery numbers .

Furthermore, Hyrkan was planning on releasing this video for free . The Rising Star title would be his bait . His plan was to secure a fan base using his battle style . As his fans increased, so would his profit .

‘My first goal will be to reach a thousand regular viewers!’

Hyrkan began climbing the mountain .

★★★

Online games were a no man’s land . There was no law . Players could freely utilize the in-game systems . This included PKs, monster steals, and item steals . Doing such things wouldn’t make you end up with handcuffs on your hands .

Even so, it wasn’t something people usually did . It was considered ill-mannered . Most players tried to keep the most basic courtesy . The problem were the ones who did something when told not to .

Ralph Family .

Its three members were exactly like so .

With two swordsmen and a healer, their levels totaled to 62, each averaging to about 21 .

They were friends in real life, and as they had a certain amount of money, they started the game purely to enjoy it . Everything was fine up to here . The problem was that their way of purely enjoying Warlord was to mercilessly PK players that looked easy to deal with .

Their provocation didn’t just end at PKing their target . They first hindered their target’s hunting or stole the monsters he was attacking . Nothing in Warlord was as infuriating as monster stealing . This was because it took a large amount of effort and concentration to kill each monster . One could let it by once, but there would not be a second time .

“How out those guys just now?”

“That 3-man party?”

“Their items weren’t the default ones . We’ll get quite a profit if we PK them . ”

“But if they’re part of a guild, it’ll get complicated . ”

Rule number one – never touch parties suspected of being part of a guild . If they did, the guild would come after them for revenge .

“Tsk . There’s no good prey today . Just a few days ago, it was half monsters, half preys . ”

“That’s because the monsters were concentrated around here . Most of the quests generated now are west of Figur’s Castle . We should probably head there too . ”

“Then why don’t we PK a few on our way there?”

“Don’t even think about it . ”

Rule number two – don’t randomly PK people .

“We’re going to end up in the dumpster if we’re not careful . ”

“I know . I was just saying . ”

There was a definite difference between PKing without reason and PKing after a quarrel . Though both were dirty, a third party could interfere with the former while it was harder to do so for the latter .

“Jaiyu’s right . What’s the fun in hunting some low-level chump? It’s more fun stepping on a raging scrub . ”

In the end, the Ralph Family didn’t just enjoy PK . They were the perverted types who PKed after irritating their targets until they lost their cool .

“Hey, hey . ”

They had a rare finding .

“How about him?”

“Who?”

“That guy over there by himself . ”

Prey had appeared . They caught sight of a player slowly climbing a mountain without a pathway .

“Let’s see . His items are the ones provided by the Subjugation Association . A swordsman? He’s got to be a swordsman right? He wouldn’t be here alone, otherwise . ”

“But if he’s here by himself, he’s probably not a newbie… is he cosplaying as one?”

It was hard to find players working alone in Warlord . Most moved in a party of 3 .

If there was someone moving alone, it meant one of two things .

First was that he was much higher in level than the monsters spawning in the area . Second was that he was just lucky and haven’t been killed yet .

The Ralph Family once again looked at their prey .

Because he was wearing a mask of some sort, they couldn’t tell what he looked like . Because they were far, they weren’t able to tell his physique either . Then again, physique didn’t matter in Warlord .

But having hunted on easy prey for the past few days, their sixth sense was telling them .

“He has that pushover aura . There’s no way he’s an expert . ”

“Agreed . ”

“Right, he reeks of that pushover smell . ”

He’s definitely a pushover!

Because they succeeded every time they had a similar feeling, they didn’t doubt themselves .

“Alright, this will be our last Mt . Bima fishing . We’ll get the hell out of here afterward . ”