บท 62: The Heroic Lands (2)
Having finished the map, Sanghyuk erased the mapping skill this time as well. And this time, he left the basic skill slot empty. He had a skill in mind, so he planned to add it later.
Having finished creating the map in one week, Sanghyuk went to the largest city in the Heroic Lands, 'Tirune'. As there were no other users in the heroic lands yet, there was no need to move the Golden Mountain merchant guild just yet.
The reason he came to Tirune was for something else.
'Secret dungeon... before the other users arrive, I need to monopolize all the secret dungeons that I know of.'
Unlike Hellfire Desert, which had barely any secret dungeons, there were incredibly many secret dungeons in the Heroic Lands.
Although Sanghyuk didn't know the locations to all of those, he had information on a considerable number of them. Using that information as the basis, he would be able to gain incredible profits if he could monopolize as many of them as possible.
'Even if I can't find anything else, I must absolutely discover the Swordking's Tomb and Hurricane Hole.'
These two were the most famous among the secret dungeons in the Heroic Lands.
The Swordking's Tomb would be best if he could monopolize it all by himself, and Hurricane Hole was good for selling entrance tickets.
Between these two, he had very precise information about Hurricane Hole, while he knew a few fragmented information about the Swordking's Tomb.
Sanghyuk thought that it would be better to look for the Swordking's Tomb first since he already knew about Hurricane Hole. As the Path to Death still had no intentions of letting users pass, he had a lot of time.
The Swordking's Tomb was literally a grave where the Swordking lay. The Swordking was one of the 144 recorded heroes of the Heroic Lands.
To rank them, he would be in the top 50 at least. The reason the Swordking's Tomb was ranked as the best secret dungeon though, was because of the various spiritual pills that could be gotten from it.
Spiritual pills were special items that permanently raised a stat by a small amount when consumed by a user.
Most spiritual pills raised a single point, like +1 health and +1 agility, but the important thing was that it could be stacked until +100.
Although the drop rate of the spiritual pills wasn't that high, the Swordking's Tomb itself was a secret dungeon that could be run for a long time, so he would be able to gain a considerable amount of those pills if he could monopolize this dungeon.
Dungeons that dropped spiritual pills were all classified as 'jackpot' dungeons, and among the secret dungeons, only the Swordking's Tomb dropped spiritual pills.
The rest were either from public dungeons or competitive dungeons that could be entered from the Hole of Mortality.
In other words, only the Swordking's Tomb was a place that could be monopolized.
Spiritual pills, due to their traits, didn't appear on the auctions, and even when they did, they were traded for incredibly expensive prices, so the best thing was to get them himself.
Sanghyuk did have plans to add spiritual pills into the buying list for the Golden Mountain merchant guild once the users flooded into the Heroic Lands, but no matter how good their business skills were, it would be incredibly hard to get any spiritual pills.
If the Swordking's Tomb was a dungeon that was perfect for monopolizing spiritual pills, Hurricane Hole was a secret dungeon that he could profit by revealing the walkthrough to others.
Hurricane Hole was a secret dungeon in the form of numerous holes connected into one. And up to 100 teams could simultaneously hunt in different holes.
Since the maximum clear count for the dungeon was infinite, there would be no problems no matter how many teams entered the dungeon per day.
However, the catch was that the dungeon only lasted 4 months. During those four months, he would be able to sell admission tickets to countless users.
On top of that, the dungeon difficulty wasn't that hard, and the amount of karma that could be gained from it was also above average, so there were no better places for teams of 3-4 people to level up.
Sanghyuk was planning to sell the entrance tickets through the Golden Mountain merchant guild once he found it.
Getting spiritual pills from the Swordking's Tomb and getting gold from Hurricane Hole was his first objective.
According to what he knew, the entrance to the Swordking's Tomb was near Tirune. Although he never went there in his previous life, he did watch a related video.
The video didn't talk about the exact location of the dungeon, but had a crucial hint of opening the dungeon. The problem was that he didn't know where to find the dungeon.
What was fortunate was that he remembered a few pieces of information he had heard.
'The Swordking's Tomb. A secret dungeon monopolized by Rising guild in my previous life. Rising got some fun out of that secret dungeon. According to rumors that came after the secret dungeon disappeared, a guild member found out about the secrets of the Swordking's Tomb after doing a quest that required him to catch thieves.'
Sanghyuk was thinking of tracing the Swordking's Tomb through the information he knew. Actually, though, any other user would not even dare think about doing that.
In a situation where they do not know which NPC gave out a quest to catch a thief, they would have to raise familiarity with all 7,949 NPCs that existed in Tirune to 'familiar' before getting the quest... realistically, it would be impossible to raise familiarity with nearly 8,000 NPCs to that high.
It would take at least half a year even if he went crazy.
However, there was no need for Sanghyuk to do this near-impossible task. He already had the 'Shadow Duke of Falcon' title that raised the familiarity of all NPCs with the exception of a few special ones to familiar level.
So, he just had to walk around Tirune and speak to them and see what quests he got.
He would receive the quests and just give up those unrelated to thieves. Of course, the familiarity he had with the NPCs would go down a little, but that wasn't a problem.
Sanghyuk walked around Tirune and spoke with several NPCs. There were those that gave him quests, while there were those that didn't. He gave up all the unrelated quests and looked for the quest for catching thieves.
Only after he gave up around 200 quests could he find one that was related to what he was looking for.
[Quest] 'Tirune's frantic thieves'
: Storekeeper Cotva is suffering from extreme stress thanks to the thieves that steal items from the store every day. He wants to exterminate the thieves, but it's not as easy as it sounds.
Progress: Catch thieves (0/100), discover thief bases (0/4)
'This is it!'
The moment he read the description of the quest, he was sure that this was the quest he was looking for.
Not only was there a category for catching thieves, there was also the part where he had to look for their bases. Looking for their bases was the key to discovering the secret dungeon.
Sanghyuk immediately set out to catch thieves after getting the quest.
There were a lot of thieves inside and even outside Tirune. As they were classified as monster-type NPCs, they could be killed within the city.
He quickly started exterminating them and he soon discovered all their bases as well.
The Swordking's Tomb lay within one of those bases. Of course, Sanghyuk didn't know which. Even if he did, just getting to the entrance didn't mean he could enter.
To open the secret dungeon, he had to have a 'key'. Like knowing how to manipulate secret mechanisms or using certain items to expose the entrance.
In that sense, the quest Sanghyuk was doing was an important clue in acquiring that key.
Since finding thieves and their bases was an easy job for Sanghyuk, he finished all of that in just an hour.
"Ooh, amazing! You exterminated those vermins... you are more amazing than you look. Since this is the case, can I ask you for one more thing? There will definitely be items that they stole from my store somewhere in their bases. If you get me those, then I will give you more rewards. Oh! Take him with you. He lived here in my store for over a decade, so he should be able to smell the items from my store."
Cotva let the dog he raised follow Sanghyuk and asked him to find the items, and the quest went on to the second chain quest.
'So this was the key.'
Sanghyuk realized that this was the key that he was looking for the moment he looked at the 2nd chain quest.
The thin old dog.... He found it a little funny that this old dog was the key, but as long as it let him find the Swordking's Tomb, then all was good.
***
*pant pant pant, woof! Woof!*
The old dog did its job. It found the lost items from Cotva's store from the most tattered-looking graveyard out of the 4 bases.
The items were hidden behind a wall. Since the space that hid the items were very delicately hidden, Sanghyuk thought that he wouldn't have been able to find it even if he decided to look for it without the dog.
'There's no way those thieves made such a space... so they used it after coincidentally discovering the space? Then that means that this is the entrance to the secret dungeon....'
Sanghyuk first took all the items into his bag. Once he took this to Cotva, then the quest would end, and if the just took them for himself, his familiarity would degrade as the quest failed, but in exchange, he would get the items.
However, this wasn't the time to be pondering about that right now.
'It should be around here somewhere.'
Sanghyuk started looking for something in the hidden space. After a bit of time, he could eventually discover what he was looking for.
Dozens of wall paintings. They were what Sanghyuk was looking for.
To be exact, they weren't exactly 'paintings' but 'puzzles'.
Only when he solved the puzzle would he be able to enter the Swordking's Tomb.
Actually, the Rising guild also took around a week to solve this puzzle in Sanghyuk's previous life. Eventually, they had to ask for an external puzzles expert and could only open the tomb then.
The puzzle's difficulty was just that high.
Obviously, Sanghyuk couldn't solve this puzzle either. In the video he saw, there was the solution to this puzzle, but the problem was that Sanghyuk didn't remember the exact moves they took.
Actually, it was more correct to say that it was practically impossible to remember everything correctly from a video he saw 10 years ago.
'Good. I'm here now... and there's only one thing to do.'
Sanghyuk smiled and left the hidden space.
This wasn't something that he could open. However, he knew a person that might be able to open this.
'Well, not exactly a 'person', I guess.'
Sanghyuk summoned a person without hesitation Well, an NPC, to be exact.
Ilya appeared in front of him. With his title 'Ah! My Ilya', he was able to summon Ilya as though summoning a tamed monster.
Of course, she would disappear once the duration ended.
"Have you called."
Ilya kneeled on one knee and spoke with respect.
"Ilya. Your 'Unlock' skill... can it open a door that's locked in a puzzle form?"
Sanghyuk looked around Ilya's status window a few days ago, and found out that she had gained a new skill after a little bit of the seal was dispelled.
[Darkmoon-specific skill 'Unlock(S)']
This was the skill she had.
"If it is locked in any form, then I can unlock it with my abilities."
Ilya did not let him down.
"Good! Then follow me."
Sanghyuk took Ilya and walked back to the hidden space.
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