by Elan Wang
Bloodysword and Athena’s bow.
There was one thing these two items had in common. They were both weapons that I had used at least once before. Of course the bloodysword is something I use almost everyday, but I had used the Athena’s bow only once before when I was trying to catch the attention of a monster.
This meant that every weapon I use will appear in this book. And it will show me what I can do to create it.
The only thing that was a disappointment was that I had never used a level 3 weapon.
“Sooah.”
“What?”
“Do you know of any level 3 hunters by any chance?”
“I do but none that I keep in touch with. They kept asking me out everyday, and I got sick of it.”
“…don’t lie.”
“You don’t know because I never put makeup on around you, but I’m quite a looker if I try.”
“Anyway. My fault for even asking.”
I needed to borrow a level 3 weapon. But there was no one who would let me borrow such an expensive weapon. If only I had a rich friend.
Rich friend?
Kim Youngchul’s face immediately come to the forefront of my mind. Since he was such a nice kid, he might actually listen to my request. But since I haven’t heard a peep from him since that day, he might have quit raids altogether.
And it was kind of bad manners to ask for such a big favor out of the blue.
Ok. Toss that out the window. If I just created a couple bloodyswords and sold them, I would have enough money to buy a level 3 weapon myself in no time. There’s no such thing as a free favor. I needed to stop trying to take unnecessary shortcuts.
My primary goal was to clear level 2 dungeons.
[0,15,3850]
I closed my eye to check my reward points.
My current abilities were: strength – 200, endurance – 150, reflex – 150, focus – 150, and defense – 100. If I used Jung Sooah’s buffer, that would increase all of them even more.
Her buffer skill would raise each ability by about 20%, and the option that she could only use once a day for 10 minutes would raise each ability by about 50%. With this, it was more than enough to clear a level 2 dungeon.
I thought about how I should use the remaining reward points and decided on increasing my stamina and defense.
The reason why I had decided on the two was because I was lacking in these two areas the most during my fight with the level 4 monster. If i were just running, then I could keep it up for 2 hours. But 10 minutes into a full on fight…that was enough to wear me out. This was because fighting a monster much bigger than me required me to run around, dodge, and jump a lot. And then getting hit that one time was enough to almost take me out of the fight. Luckily the fight was done by that time. But this meant I needed to have better defense.
[0,17,350]
Raising my stamina from 150 to 200 cost me 2,000 points, and raising my defense from 100 to 150 cost me 1,500 points. So in total, I spent 3,500 points to raise those two abilities.
“Huff. Huff.”
I collapsed onto the ground and tried to catch my breath. I spent 1 hour being Jung Sooah’s personal sandbag and the next 2 hours running around the park. But I didn’t mind. Improving myself like this didn’t cost me a dime.
“Mr. Jeon Sangmin?”
A voice interrupted my thoughts. It was a familiar voice. Who was it?
Deep scars, muscular physique, and an all too familiar voice. It was a face I’ve never seen before, but I knew who it was.
I got up from the ground as I said.
“How did you find me here? Mr. Jong Sawon.”
“So you recognized me.”
“Well, I never knew your face since you always had that helmet on, but I could tell by your voice.”
“Ah. Is this man helmet man? Didn’t he go to the hospital ward?”
“I was able to check out fairly quickly. I just had a basic physical done to make sure there was nothing seriously wrong.”
“That’s a relief. That you weren’t seriously injured.”
“So why did you come find me? If you came to ask me to pay for your hospital bills or to fight me in the name of your brother…I don’t have time for any of that, I’ll tell you right now.”
“That isn’t why I’m here.”
“Then?”
“My overall impression of helmet guy wasn’t bad at all. When I had first met him and Eum Hyunjoon at Baekoonsa dungeon, we had good fighting chemistry. I thought we got along fairly well. He didn’t have a bad personality either. It was just that one incident with the irregular that left a bad taste.
“Can I join your party please?”
“What?”
That was not what I was expecting. And it wasn’t an appealing offer to me either. Maybe he read that in my expression because then he said.
“There will not be a repeat of the incident from the last time.”
“How am I supposed to trust that? And I think you mentioned this at that last incident. That you didn’t have long to live. Do you have some kind of illness or something?”
“Terminal cancer. I have about 6 months left. If I undergo treatment, they said that I can extend it a bit more…but that’s not a route I want to take.”
“Thank you for being honest, but…”
Is he saying that since he’s dying anyway, he’d rather do it while killing a monster? That kind of an attitude is not at all helpful in a party. Why? Because a person on the cusp of death is selfish. Even if they were the more giving and altruistic person in the world, when death is at their front step…all they can think about is themselves.
If I allow that type of person into my party and something happens, it would only hurt us.
“Why don’t you go and ask Eum Hyunjoon? Aren’t you on better terms with him?”
“I came to you after already being rejected by him. It’s probably for the same reason you are thinking right now.”
“If you just came to me as a last resort, then I can only give you the same answer.”
In one way, you had to respect the guy for his brutal honesty.
Shwing~
Jong Sawon drew his sword. Jung Sooah and glasses girl stepped back and stared at him with wary looks. I raised my hand to calm them before taking the sword he was now handing over to me.
This…I’ve seen this before.
“This is a level 3 Rubicon sword. From what I can remember, this has a value of 700,000 dollars. But how did you…”
“I purchased it with the money from my brother’s life insurance and from selling the house.”
So he was trusting in this sword when he went to fight the level 4 monster. Since he only had a level 1 sword when I had first met him, he must have purchased this in between that time.
“A level 3 weapon…”
If I said I didn’t feel a bit of sway from this new turn of events, I would be lying. And this man would be dying soon. Since he sold his house and used the entirety of his brother’s insurance money on this sword, that meant he probably didn’t have any family left.
That meant if he died, then the probability of this sword coming into my possession was very high. When I realized that the direction of my thoughts flowed so easily in that sequence, I instantly started hating myself for it. How could I be so calculating with a man who was on his way to his deathbed?
But this was a level 3 weapon. Even if I didn’t inherit it later down the road, getting it to appear in my Item Fusion book would still be a great asset. The only thing I had to do was include him in my party.
What to do? It wasn’t a bad choice no matter what I decided to do.
All of a sudden, Jong Sawon dropped to his knees in front of me.
“What are you doing? I really hate this kind of thing. Please get up.”
“I’ll promise you one thing if you just accept me into your party. I will always listen to any order you make. Though I can only ask you to trust me when I say this. I only need one chan
ce.
“I can’t understand why you are going so far as to beg me like this. If you have a level 3 weapon, can’t you just make your own party?”
“I don’t think I could create a party that is capable enough to kill that level of monster.”
“Ok. Let’s say that another irregular appears. If I order a retreat, what will you do?”
“…That is the only order I cannot obey.”
So his word changes already. No, he’s probably saying he will do everything I say except this one thing.
Stubborn. Well…stubborn and determined people can turn out useful…but can also be disastrous.
I lightly sighed and nodded my head.
“Fine.”
“Fine? You’ll accept my answer even with that one exception?”
“I wasn’t going to believe you if you said you would obey my order of retreat anyway. But I do have one condition.”
“Name it.”
“If you ever ignore a command or order from me and do whatever you feel like doing, know that I will not follow you or try and save you like I did last time.”
If I couldn’t control him, I just didn’t have to. It was enough to have stopped him from suicide one time.
Jong Sawon nodded his head.
“Oh yeah. And one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“That sword. Let me try using it once.”
I tried wielding the sword and swinging it about a few times, but it didn’t appear in the Item Fusion book. That only brought me to one conclusion. I needed to use a weapon on an actual monster for it to appear in the book.
Since we had decided to leave the mercenary team, we needed to pick another dungeon to raid.
I thought over all the dungeons in my database and chose a select few that would be the best fit for us.
The closest dungeon among those was none other than the Bookhansan dungeon.
This dungeon was originally known for being popular with the leisure parties. This was because the terrain was plain and open, and it was usually full of fairly easy to defeat monsters such as goblins and orks.
[SunbehOppa! Jackpot!]
Just as I was thinking all of this, there was a special news report.
All the ores that came out of dungeons were, by practice, managed by the country. And the news was now reporting that they will be reducing the reservation raid time in a dungeon from 4 hours to 2 hours.
This was because since the level 1 dungeons had disappeared, it had directly impacted the already dwindling country’s ore supply. They were probably aiming to increase the turnover rate in the dungeons to boost ore gathering.
“That’s not jackport. Stupid. That’s bad. If it’s two hours, that means our raid time is reduced by half.”
And if you clear a dungeon in 2 hours, an irregular would appear. And, like what happened last time, it might appear even if we didn’t clear the dungeon. This could only mean that clearing a dungeon quickly wasn’t the trigger. The actual trigger, more specifically, was the rate at which you went through the dungeon.
And if you clear a dungeon in 2 hours, an irregular would appear. In that instant, I just realized another clue to the irregulars from what happened last time. Since the level 4 monster appeared even if when didn’t clear the dungeon, that meant that clearing a dungeon quickly wasn’t the trigger. The actual trigger, more specifically, was the rate at which you went through the dungeon.
[Hey at least they’re reducing the admission fees.]
“30 percent? Since they’re cutting our raid time in half, shouldn’t they be cutting our admissions in half too?”
[That is true. But it’s better than nothing.]
“Hm…I guess I could look on the bright side…”
Previously, since the dungeons were always so booked in advanced that no matter how quickly you reserved a spot, you could only do a raid every three days. But with this new change, we would probably be able to go hunting once every two days…or maybe even once a day if we got lucky. If none of us get injured, we could potentially earn much more.
[And they also say that leisure parties will be allowed again.]
“Looks like they’re desperate.”
It hasn’t even been 3 months since the last incident. For them to allow leisure parties to resume to quickly was a considerable risk. For the government, known to hate taking on unnecessary responsibility, to burden themselves with this risk…meant that there was considerable pressure from the business community from that lack of minerals and ores.
There were a lot of people gathered in front of the Northern Mountain dungeon. The crowd was a mix of people ready to climb the mountain and hunters about to enter the dungeon. Carrying the heavy armor and equipment on top of the huge backpack just to get to a bus stop was no easy feat.
“Do I need to buy a car…”
I began to think of the van that we had taken to the Baeksapyoung dungeons.
Maybe I should have just called Cho Youngoo to pick me up.
“SunbehOppa!”
I could hear Jung Sooah’s loud voice yelling for me. She caught up to me in almost one leap and bowed to try and catcher her breath.
“How can the party head be the last one to get here?”
“Sorry. There was a bit of traffic on the way. But didn’t I still get here earlier than the appointed time?”
“I guess. But did you know that manager Kim was the first one to get here today?”
“Well, it’s because I told him to get here by 4.”
“Ha? So then he was actually 30 minutes late?”
“Yah. But I guess now he’ll start catching on that I’ve been purposely giving him an earlier time than everyone else.”
“You think so?”
“If not, then that’s better for me. Let’s hurry on up. If we’re late, that means the time we get to spend in the dungeon will be that much shorter.”
Northern Mountain dungeon, even though it was a level 2, was known to be a relatively easy dungeon to clear. But we still needed to keep our guard up. If our time in the dungeons is reduced to 2 hours, that means we will be forced to clear the dungeon faster…resulting in a higher probability of an irregular appearing.
Even though there were 7 of us, since 2 of us in the group were porters, we just needed to pay a smaller extra fee for admissions instead of a full hunter’s price.
The inside of the dungeon was deathly quiet. The cave’s walls were a red color and, unlike limestone caves, were completely dry. Since the dungeon ran in a straight path, there was no way for someone to get lost. After a simple briefing with the team, we went ahead to start our hunt.
Because monsters don’t usually appear in the passageways, there was no reason for us to be nervous just yet.
After walking for about 5 minutes, we came to the first room. Taking into consideration the new reduced raid time, in order for us to clear the entire dungeon, we had to clear each of the 7 rooms in less than 3 minutes. There were 5 small orks. Looks like a pretty large count for the first batch.
Manager Kim did his sleep spell first. As a golden beam began to glow, two orks fell into slumber. After hustling from one raid to the other while working with the mercenary team for a month, it looked like he made some improvements.
“Mr. Cho Youngoo! You think you can handle it?”
“I’ll try!”
“Mr.. Cho Youngoo! To the right! Mr. Jong Sawon! To the left!”
“Roger!”
Piping!
An arrow flew into the air.
Each of us took on an ork from the three running toward us in a straight line. Since there was no reason for us to drag on the time, we tried to finish them off as soon as possible.
After I parried my opponent’s attack twice in a row, it began to try and use brute force. Orks were known to try and use strength as their main focus when attacking. But, including Sooah’s buff, my strength was at about 240%.
Can I beat it?
“Wow!”
> There’s a reason why orks were known for their strength. No matter how much strength I put into it, I couldn’t overpower it.
But fighting wasn’t always about strength or power.
I suddenly relaxed to catch it off guard and moved to its side. My surprising move had pushed the or off balance for a quick moment.
I couldn’t let this opportunity pass by.
I stabbed my bloodysword into its carotiod artery and sliced across.
[+200]
After confirming that I got my reward points, I went over to where Cho Youngoo was fighting his own ork.
Cho Youngoo was just barely holding on. It had probably been only about 30 seconds since we started our fight. But having been able to stay in the fight for this long was worthy of praise.
“Haa!”
I yelled out as I ran toward Cho Youngoo’s foe. Though it had an arrow stuck in its shoulder and leg, my yell must have surprised it because it threw its hand ax in my direction.
I barely dodged the flying weapon and stabbed out with my own longsword.
The blade passed right into the ork’s body. My level 1 longsword was able to pierce the hide of a level 2 monster.
The ork started coughing up blood as it held onto its bleeding side and stepped back.
Shwing! Shwing!
Another two arrows flew and burrowed themselves into the ork’s body. Though they weren’t fatal attacks, they were enough to cause damage. The ork’s defense was definitely lower than most other level 2 monsters.
I swung my longsword in the ork’s direction and ran right at it.
My longsword pieced nearly halfway into the monster. My armor did sustain some damage, but this was nothing. Then Cho Youngoo took his own sword and stabbed it into the now immobile ork.
Though the ork flopped about from the impact of the stab, it didn’t sustain a big wound this time. It looks like even though his sword was the same level as mine, the level of damage also depends on the person making it.
I guess I needed to start getting ready for the finale.
I grabbed the hilt of my sword and shoved it all the way through this time, and the ork fell to the ground. When Cho Youngoo tried to follow my example and go in for the kill, I held him back.