Emperor of Solo Play

 ­ 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.”