Two weeks went by in the blink of an eye.

Doing quests, training in the practice ground, returning to the inn — all had been done continuously in days gone by.

I’d killed tons of creatures in the forest and had since leveled up, not in a sense of numeric levels but in my overall stats. Among which “SPR” was the hardest stat to increase because it wasn’t often that I got the chance to use it until the point of exhaustion.

Needless to say, I did muscle exercises daily; I was well aware that my muscles had started forming up recently. The once thin body had even formed a noticeable six-pack, and what was even more shocking, my height increased by one centimeter. I thought that my growth had already stopped a while back, but boy was I wrong… I still had some more left in the tank it seemed.

Thus, while walking on the street, I checked my stats which had improved considerably, with a smile on my face.

Name: Vincent Anderson

Species: Human (otherworlder)

Sex: Male

Age: 20 years old

Height: 176 cm

Occupation: Programmer student, adventurer

Title: [Humanoid] Dungeon Master

Vocation: [Programming] [Developer Interface]

Stats:

STR: F+ (17) AGI: F (15) VIT: F (14) MAG: F+ (18) SPR: F (11)

Accumulation Points: 10 [F+]

Bernard had been one of the biggest reasons for my rapid improvement; he had taught me many things, including swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat, which were very important, considering that I had been relying on a borrowed strength so far (my set). He even taught me archery, something that I’d taken an interest in for a long time.

Anyway, today was one of the days that I took my time exploring the city. It had become a habit of mine to do this when I was done with adventurer’s work and training. And due to this, I got to find all sorts of places in Xenonia. But just like there was light, there must be shadow, this city too had its own dark side.

This time especially, I strolled the street to the southwest of the city. Moments passed on and the pedestrians walking around became less frequent, and gradually, the road went from a stone-paved one to something made of dirt and mud. Stink pervaded the air, causing me to grimace.

“This should be it,” I muttered to myself.

I once sighted a small thief stealing a piece of bread on a nearby street. Just yesterday, I spotted the same thief running to this place, so I followed them but had to stop myself from proceeding further because it was late at night. However, this curiousness kept bugging me… and here I was.

Deeper in, homeless people were rampant but what was more interesting was that they weren’t humans — not physically at least. It was the same with the thief yesterday… Small bodies and faces like that of rats, though there were also humans with animal ears and tails, and the rest was of several other races as said by their status screens, though I didn’t find any dwarves or elves. Famished, their faces looking at the ground, as though they had nothing left in them.

I shouldn’t linger here for long. While I may be sympathetic to them… An idea suddenly sprang up inside my mind: Why didn’t I build a home for them to stay near the dungeon?

Helping people while farming CP, that would be killing two birds with one stone. Though, I must discuss this with Lorelei and prepare the place and all, lest there would be dire consequences. Wait, this…

My Vocation actually detected several individuals — adventurers — with malicious emotions on them. Malicious intent? Toward whom? Me? When I sneaked a peek at the source, these people were hiding close behind me as if observing and following. A bunch of stalkers.

Most of them were weaklings, but I shouldn’t bring trouble to the homeless people here. Accordingly, I walked to a secluded alleyway near a busy street so I could escape easily whenever. Plus, there was neither bloodlust nor killing intent, so whatever their intentions were, it shouldn’t be too extreme.

Heaving a deep breath, I positioned myself on the edge of the alleyway, and they showed themselves soon enough. To my surprise, they were a gang of five troublemakers in the guild, as I even knew the one that led them — a ragged older man that always looked half-drunk all the time with a machete on his waist, Jack.

I wasn’t sure how to receive them… but I believed that it would be cool to act like someone that already knew it all.

“Gentlemen, what brought you here?” I spoke first, cringing a little at the way I said those words. But hey, it doesn’t sound bad.

Yet, they didn’t seem to play along with the script I had in mind.

“Who have we got here? The new rising star of the guild. Getting all cocky, eh?”

“Yeah! Just because he cleared several slightly difficult quests, the guild has been praising him. He must be sucking up with someone in the guild.”

“Uh-huh. Last time, I saw him bootlicking the guild instructor.”

“Enough.” Jack stopped the chatter and said, “Let’s give this newbie a chance.”

“Mr. Jack, was it? I thought we had an agreement.” Previously, three days after joining the guild or so, he came to me looking for trouble as soon as finding out that I was a newbie, but he instantly refrained when I bribed him with money.

“Shut up! Sir Jack is not for you to order!”

“I agree. Because of you, the quest that we would have turned in two days ago was withdrawn!”

“Yeah! You’ve to compensate us!”

“Absolutely!”

“You hear ‘em. It’s not that I wanna do this, ya know.” He smirked, though he didn’t try to hide his involvement in this.

So, they were just a bunch of jealous adventurers… What a pain. First off, the Adventurer’s Guild had numerous types of quests, and not all of them were recurring. In fact, most were one-time quests. And the quest I did three days ago, just a day before they allegedly said they were going to turn in… it should be about turning in an antler of a hybrid stag, and it had been accepted by a group of irresponsible adventurers that tried to bubble up the quest reward. Hang on, aren’t they just a bunch of scumbags?

“Then, what do you want?”

“Whoa, there. We ain’t no bad guys.” He held up his hands. “Look, how ‘bout you pay us some more of those ‘silver candies,’ then we’ll leave this whole thing behind.”

Apparently, it was extortion. Typical. I knew that this whole thing would happen eventually since I had been rigging the quests for rapid advancement in rank, but I didn’t know that it would happen so soon. Although, these scumbags were notorious for bullying the weak and fearing the strong.

Give them an inch, and they will take a mile. Since there are no witnesses here, I should finish this once and for all — straight to uproot them! I secretly clenched the sword on my waist while putting my other hand inside my pocket.

Of these five scumbags, only Jack posed a threat to me since he had an E evaluation, and he also possessed a very unique Vocation — [Drunk Swordsmanship]. Nevertheless, once I showed some of my cards, I was confident to eliminate them in less than a minute.

But should I really kill them? Even while my perception had changed drastically since becoming a Dungeon Master, I was still human. Also, I didn’t believe that the world was simply black and white.

“How much do you want? One hundred? Two hundred?” He was pretty happy with one hundred before…

“Hey, we’re not beggars here! One thousand for each of us and for you to not take any request from the guild for at least a month.”

You wanted to hammer down the nail that stuck out, huh? Okay, that crossed my bottom line!

“You can go to hell!” Those words slipped away from my mouth.

“What?!”

“Sir, I think he’s rejecting your generous offer.” Scumbag A said. Generous, my ass!

Then, Scumbag B proposed, “We should teach him a lesson: break his limbs and toss him to those filthy demi-humans. We’ll see how he begged us at that time.”

But Scumbag C quickly cautioned, “Hey, we can’t kill him. The guild will come knocking on our doors,”

“Idiot! Of course we won’t! But if no one finds out, heh-heh…” Scumbag D laughed.

Naming these adventurers Scumbag A, B, C, and D was like assigning them variables.

At any rate, the “negotiation” seemed to have broken down, so a confrontation was unavoidable. But no matter. The whole reason I lured them to a small alleyway was because of my sword — it was time for this thing to shine. Still, who would have thought those cliché events in novels would happen to me?

“Wait up!”

When I was about to draw out my sword and finish this all in a single sweep, someone’s shouting echoed over here, upon which a guy that looked rough around the edges with a red hair and a line scar across his nose bridge briskly intruded the alleyway.

“The fuck are ya?” Jack questioned, a blood vein on his forehead.

“I am—”

“Zeth! Geez! Don’t just rush there yourself!”

“Hey, Zeth, wait for us!”

Two people, one male and one female, were running into the alleyway. It appeared that they were his friends.

“Oh, Lara! Pallad! What took you guys so long to get here?” shouted Zeth, intensely waving at the approaching two.

The girl that seemed to be Lara reprimanded between bated breath while holding onto her knees, “Huff… Geez! We told you to wait! We were supposed to report this to the guild instead before acting ourselves!”

“Hahaha! But that’s our Zeth — all energetic!” exclaimed the other guy, likely to be Pallad.

“Who the heck are you three interlopers? Don’t stick your nose on things you shouldn’t, or I’ll kick your ass!”

“We are Zeth’s adventurer team! A party of Marble-ranked adventurers from a nearby town. Stop with this, or we will report what transpired to the guild!”

“You dare! Guys, let’s give these people trying to play the hero a lesson they’ll never forget!”

““Oooh!””

The scumbag adventurers yelled in unison and brandished their weapons at those three.

Seeing the weapons pointed at them, the trio didn’t seem to panic and went to discuss with each other before also drawing out their weapons: a pair of disproportionately large iron gauntlets for Zeth; a bastard sword for Pallad; and a long golden staff for Lara.

“Zeth’s adventurer team, let’s do this!!” Zeth shouted a battle cry before charging at the scumbag adventurers.

In response to the cry, Lara was beaming red with shame while Pallad facepalmed himself, but they soon followed Zeth’s footsteps and charged in like a team they were. As for the scumbags, they were stunned by the sudden aggression and got easily overwhelmed.

“You’re lucky that your friends are here. But once I deal with them, I’ll deal with you!” Jack offered me a glare before joining the fray.

Heh! Are you really going to turn your back on me? I smirked. The news about me passing the acceleration test never went out to the public, so not many knew what I was capable of — turning away was a big, big mistake.

In this clash, Zeth was punching back any adventurers that came near him, easily incapacitating at least two of them. But Pallad was even more so, using the blunt edges of his sword, he managed to tie down the rest before Jack had to step in and fight him. However, thanks to Lara’s support in magic, the battle was still to their advantage.

Of course, I didn’t stay still; this was my problem, first of all.

“Argh!” Scumbag A that was about to strike Zeth got shot on the head by my iron bullet.

Next, I shot at Scumbag C, who was creeping behind the girl, Lara, on his stomach. “Guh! Wh-What just hit me?”

I stealthily flicked one iron bullet that had been toned down in acceleration at a time at a critical point. Helping them whenever and wherever they were in danger of getting hurt, even though it was mostly unneeded. It was a good thing I took my time the past couple of weeks to increase my accuracy; otherwise... they would have gotten hit as well.

“They are all insane!”

“Retreat! Let’s run away!”

“Ack! My head! Ugh! W-Wait for me!”

Beaten black and blue, the scumbag adventurers scurried away with their tails between their legs.

“Dammit! Just you wait! I’ll report this to the guild!” Jack threatened, quickly disappearing out of the alleyway.

I had thought about killing them to uproot the source of future troubles and thus avoiding cliché, but with this Zeth and co. here, I put that thought aside for now. Enjoy it while it lasts.