Chapter 9: Monopoly (2)
A few weeks from now, rumors that killing malefactors gave more karma than hunting monsters as well as giving out pretty good titles would float around, and the so-called 'top-rankers' would start hunting the malefactors. With that, malefactors would be pulled out from their roots.
Before the appearance of the user 'Killing machine', a famous malefactor who appears around a couple months later, it would become hard to see the appearance of any malefactor users.
'Oh yeah! There was that title.'
Sanghyuk remembered a title that he hadn't thought of before. Since even he couldn't remember everything clearly, there was bound to be some things he forgot.
"What the hell is up with this guy?"
"He's probably scared stiff. He looks like he has nothing on him at a glance so let's kill him quickly and look for our next target."
The three malefactor users were PK'ers (Player killers) who had killed tens of players already and they thought that Sanghyuk was scared of them.
However, their target was thinking the complete opposite.
'All three are perfect malefactors. That means that I won't get evil karma even if I kill them all due to the self-defense system, and in fact, I should be able to get some pretty karma.'
He was instead re-calculating his course of action. Of course, not only was he a lower level than the PK'ers in front of him, he lost in numbers as well, but he did not think for a second that he would lose.
*Srrrr*.
The three PK'ers took out iron swords that were rusted in some places. Those iron swords were the cheapest available weapons in Falcon city.
"I'll say this again, but consider yourself unlucky. I'll send you painlessly."
The malefactors seemed to consider Sanghyuk as a dead man and approached him. Right now, it had only been 4 days since the launch of the open beta, so the majority of the users didn't even know how to acquire 'Ancient Knowledge'.
With that being the case, three on one would result in one being killed without being able to counterattack at all.
In a situation where neither side could use any skills, the side with more members and more weapons could only be advantageous. Normally, that is.
'They are noobs at using the sword.'
Sanghyuk was the furthest away from a 'normal' user. Although he was unarmed and did not equip any Ancient Knowledge, he wasn't nervous at all.
PvP in EL was more familiar to him than eating. Although he possessed neither a weapon nor any Ancient Knowledge, his experience possessed greater power than those.
The moment the one at the front charged at Sanghyuk and swung his sword, Sanghyuk instead chose to close the distance and slap at his wrist with his right hand with precision.
*Paaaah!*
The rusted iron sword barely missed his body, but Sanghyuk didn't flinch an eyebrow. It was a natural thing to dodge as closely as possible when top-tier users fought in his previous life, so this was nothing.
"Aaack!"
Since Sanghyuk had invested all of his ten growth points into strength, the malefactor user immediately lost grip of the sword and screamed.
However, Sanghyuk's attack hadn't ended yet. Sanghyuk caught the iron sword in the air with his left hand and immediately turned around. The reason he could steal the opponent's weapon like this was that the opponent was a malefactor user.
At this point in time, there were no users that knew this was possible. Perhaps due to that, the user that had his sword stolen stood there absent-mindedly without knowing what just happened.
*Slash*, "Kerrrgh!"
When Sanghyuk rotated rapidly the rusted iron sword slashed the swordless user's abdomen deeply.
Thanks to various revision mechanisms, the feeling of slashing was completely different from actually slashing open a person's body, but Sanghyuk was instead more familiar with this feeling.
Sanghyuk knew that with this kind of feedback, low-level users with no Ancient Knowledge had no chance of surviving. So, he immediately ducked down to dodge the sword from the other two malefactor users.
Actually, the swords that these three swung around was nothing more than a child's play to him. If they used skills to swing these swords, he wouldn't have fought them so easily, but that wasn't the case.
To put it to perspective, Sanghyuk was like an adult athlete looking at pre-school children swinging around toy swords.
*Pa-pah*, Sanghyuk leaned left and right alternately to easily dodge the two swords that the two malefactors swung. Then he immediately struck the rusted iron sword in his right hand into the head of the malefactor on his right hand side, while simultaneously wrapping his left arm around the next of the left hand side user.
*Crunch*, "Grrrrrrrrk."
Sanghyuk tightened his left arm to twist the final user's neck. The malefactor users with a puny amount of health were too easily killed by Sanghyuk.
This all happened in mere seconds. At the moment the first user collapsed onto the ground, the sword was struck into the second malefactor user's head and continuing, the last malefactor user's neck broke.
Sanghyuk had all that hard-to-describe scenario in mere seconds and threw the user with the crunched neck onto the ground.
White light was scattering instead of red blood, but it was still true that the scene looked gruesome. However, Sanghyuk was actually very calm. Actually, the only reason he could stay indifferent was thanks to the 'User mentality support' program that was developed ten years ago and contributed a lot to the growth of the Dream Network game industry.
Any kind of situation where it might damage the user's mentality would trigger this user mentality support program, and once that was triggered, the user would feel like everything that happens from then on was a dream.
Of course, it wasn't exactly equivalent to a dream, but it did make the user feel like they were dreaming and buffered the shock as much as possible.
This program was the reason why almost all Dream Network games could be legalized and serviced to the general public.
Without this program, users may receive a huge mental shock, so this was an essential element that was applied to all Dream Network games.
This program didn't result in decreased control over the avatar. Although something like that apparently did exist in the initial stages, but none of that existed at this point in time at least.
It was just that the part where a user cruelly kills another would be forcefully toned down and feel like it is nothing. This used very complex mechanisms so explaining it sounded like it was a contradiction, but experiencing it once would make anyone understand.
There were sometimes people who received shock despite the system in place, but that kind of people only had limited access to Dream Network contents anyway.
Finally, what was most important was that Sanghyuk had a lot of experience in this field. That was why he could accept everything so naturally.
You have eliminated malefactors and stolen a portion of their evil(black) karma.
Congratulations. Enough Karma has gathered and you have leveled up.
The three malefactors on the ground disappeared into a powder of white light. They not only gifted him with a considerable amount of karma, but they also dropped quite a lot of their stolen items as well.
Sanghyuk picked up all of them. Since he didn't possess anything like a spatial expansion bag yet, he could only take these back by hand.
"To be fair, these would become trash later, but right now, they are things that can't even be bought due to the limited supply."
The items that the malefactors robbed the other users were worth quite a pretty penny at this point in time, so there was no reason to leave them behind.
***
Having returned to Falcon City, Sanghyuk placed all the items he brought into commissioned sales. Commissioned sales were slightly different from the auction house, but if you considered the auction a place that traded on a planetary scale with an expensive fee, commissioned sales was a system where NPCs sold the items within the city with a cheaper fee.
Since the absolute majority of the users were playing around Falcon City, he didn't need to use the auction house and pay an expensive fee.
Having disposed of all the items in his possession, Sanghyuk immediately went to the common bank and took out the Traveller's Treasure Sword.
Originally Sanghyuk was going to monopolize a few other items after acquiring the First Mountaineer title. However, his thoughts changed after defeating the three malefactors.
'The First malefactor Hunter. I can't give away such a sweet title to someone else!'
This title wasn't something easy to earn if he didn't get it now when malefactors were sprouting like bamboo after rain.
With these kinds of things, he had to get them when there was an opportunity. Titles with 'First' attached was a unique-grade title which only one existed throughout the entire game so that was all the more reason he couldn't miss it.
"But what was the effect again? I can't remember other than the fact that it's quite good...."
The problem was that he did know about the existence of the First Malefactor Hunter but did not know what kind of effects it had. However, right now, it was better to gamble than back out, so Sanghyuk immediately started preparing a few things to hunt malefactors.
"The Great Library was in that place right?"
The place Sanghyuk was headed to was the Great Library of Falcon City. The reason he was going there was obviously to acquire Ancient Knowledge.
Sanghyuk had already planned out what Ancient Knowledge he would engrave into his four Soul Holes. Not all four Ancient Knowledge he was thinking of were things that could be acquired immediately so he could only start with the easiest one.
The reason Sanghyuk was going to the Great Library was that one of the four Ancient Knowledge he was thinking of could be found there.
To be exact, the Primary Ancient Knowledge that would later be raised into one of the four Ancient Knowledge he wanted was there.
What Sanghyuk ultimately wanted was the Ancient Knowledge referred to as the 'Shadow Knight'.
The acquisition was relatively easy as well, so it was one of the Ancient Knowledge that was discovered early on. The first requirement was to acquire the Primary Ancient Knowledge 'Knight' and raise it into the secondary Ancient Knowledge 'Blade Knight' before combining that with another Ancient Knowledge called the 'Shadow Thief'.
Shadow Thief was relatively easy to acquire as well, so Shadow Knight was actually quite low ranked in terms of scarcity.
The reason he chose this out of countless combinations of Ancient Knowledge in his mind was that... its abilities could act as the central pivot of the Quadra Soul that Sanghyuk was planning.
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