One Man Army Chapter 77-78

Terriculum’s proposal wasn’t a fake one. This could be discerned from the item list of their warehouse.

After being messaged, Terriculum replied that they wanted to proceed with the trade as soon as possible.

After reading the reply, Sanghyuk sent an e-mail using his Large Gold Mountain account. He sent a list of three, one being the Yin-Yang Bronze Mirror, one being the Sky Levitation Crystal, and the other being a random item that looked very expensive.

The third one was of course a distraction. It was to make them care less about the Sky Levitation Crystal or the Yin-Yang Bronze Mirror. Since he chose one of the most expensive items currently, Terriculum should accept his proposal.

The trade was held the next day. Kun came as the representative of Terriculum, and Sanghyuk met him in his Large Gold Mountain avatar. After that, everything progressed smoothly.

Sanghyuk received his 3 items and 2 million gold soon, and gave the Wyvern Blood over. Kun looked very happy receiving that item.

However, Sanghyuk wanted to rejoice even more. After all, he got the Sky Levitation Crystal.

A Sky-grade skys.h.i.+p could be made with the Sky Levitation Crystal. Of course, many other materials were necessary, but the core of them all was the Sky Levitation Crystal.

Also, Sky-grade s.h.i.+ps were worth a minimum of 5 billion won (5 million USD) in cash no matter how c.r.a.p they were.

‘But it can’t be made right now.’

Sanghyuk put the Sky Levitation Crystal inside his warehouse with a smile.

‘I have so much stuff to do.’

He had caused so many things to happen, and he had to take care of all of them by himself. So, even though he was sleeping only 4 hours a day, he had practically no rest.

He had to appraise high-value rare items, manage NPCs of the Golden Mountain Merchant guild, as well as the Hiddenline through Ilya.

Not only that, he had to visit the Rainstorm Castle for his broadcast, and he also had to clear the Swordking’s Tomb to gather spiritual pills.

Since he exercised in reality for a couple hours every day nowadays, he lacked even more time for everything.

Sanghyuk perfectly took care of everything that he had to do. When he had even the slightest bit of time left, he hunted Stone Giants to get high-grade cube fragments as well as karma.

2 weeks pa.s.sed by in a flash.

Many things happened in the world of EL during the past 2 weeks. The hottest issue was that Line Alliance ‘Twilight’ had broken through the Road to Death.

To be exact, Twilight’s core guilds, Terriculum and Red Line, had focused all of their power into breaking through to the Heroic Lands, and what was important that someone else other than One guild had finally come to the Heroic Lands.

Their success became a guidepost for other guilds and alliances. Soon, many high-ranked guilds would break through the path in succession, and once that happened, the perfect route through the Path to Death would be revealed, and conquering the path would become even easier.

Although it would still take a lot of time for normal users to arrive at the Heroic Lands, now that the aura system was updated prematurely, they would be able to come over in 4 months at the latest.

Sanghyuk had predicted this to happen ever since he saw that the aura system had been updated, so he had prepared many things to counter them.

He sold the map of the Heroic Lands, and slowly prepared for Lone King’s debut, setting up items for the avatar.

He planned to play Lone King in a different style to Blake.

The Hall of Gladiators and the Hall of Mortality weren’t simply PvP and raid. there were differences to fighting in the Hall of Gladiators and fighting other users on the field, and the Hall of Mortality was also a lot different to ordinary raid dungeons.

This was why he created an entirely new ident.i.ty for the two. “Lone King”.

Sanghyuk was planning to equip Lone King with skills and items that were designed to win in compet.i.tions.

‘Let’s combine a few of the card combinations and my insane pre-emptive attack boost to create an ambush-specialized character.’

Sanghyuk planned to make Lone King the greatest hunter, whether it was hunting users or monsters. He thought that he would be able to easily win both the halls if he did so.

To do so, he first had to upgrade his ‘Blade Knight’, his first ancient knowledge, to ‘shadow knight’. He had fulfilled all the requirements as well, and had acquired the ancient knowledge ‘shadow thief’.

What was left now was to combine Blade Knight with Shadow Thief, but there was a reason he hadn’t done so yet.

Combining the ancient knowledges Blade Knight and Shadow Thief would create ‘Shadow Knight’ a cla.s.s-3 ancient knowledge, and he would gain new soul skills suited to that job.

However, there was an interesting catch here. Fulfilling a special condition would allow him to choose three skills of the Blade Knight and make them remain through the cla.s.s fusion.

The special condition was to raise the proficiency of Blade Knight to MAX, before combining with Shadow Thief.

This secret wasn’t revealed for quite a long while in Sanghyuk’s previous life as practically no one had regrets about Blade Knight when there was a better option for them.

Since Shadow Thief was easy to acquire as well, many people abandoned Blade Knight and hopped onto the Shadow Knight train.

So, no one saw the need to raise Blade Knight’s proficiency to the max.

Like Sanghyuk’s previous life, there was a post around 5 months ago about ‘10 useful cla.s.s-3 ancient knowledge you can get your hands on pretty easily’, on several community forums, and it explained in detail about how to get the ancient knowledge Shadow Knight.

With this being the case, Shadow Knight was one of the most common ancient knowledges out there.

If Sanghyuk wished to, he would have been able to become a Shadow Knight earlier than anyone, but he didn’t.

The reason he did so was to choose 3 Blade Knight skills to keep when he became a Shadow Knight by raising Blade Knight’s proficiency to the max.

(T/N: STOP EXPLAINING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER DAMMIT.)

As a cla.s.s-2 ancient knowledge, Blade Knight had many deficiencies compared to the cla.s.s-3 ancient knowledge Shadow Knight, but its skill compositions were quite decent.

There were a few that Sanghyuk liked to use the most, and one of them was ‘Marginal Steps’ that increased his dodge rate for 1 second, and the other was ‘Sixth sense Amplification’, which amplified his senses to be as sharp as a blade, so these two were a must.

Sanghyuk was planning to choose ‘Blade Sharpening’, a pa.s.sive skill unique to Blade Knights, on top of the other two skills.

Blade Sharpening was a pa.s.sive skill that raised critical hit rate by 10%, so this worked very well in his favor as well.

‘99.4…… Looks like I’ll hit max in a few days.’

Sanghyuk checked on his proficiency of the Blade Knight and nodded his head.

Lone King’s equipment began from getting a Shadow Knight.

“Then, as per our negotiations, we’ll take the Hall of Gladiators, while Terriculum takes the Hall of Mortality.”

Red Sun did the final negotiations with Kun.

Although they received a lot of damage while breaking through the Path to Death, both Red Line and Terriculum had around 10 elite users left when they entered the Heroic Lands.

The first thing they did at the Heroic Lands was to occupy the halls. After they found out about the two halls through Gale, they forced themselves to come here to monopolize these two game contents.

“The first-user t.i.tle is still there for both the Hall of Gladiators and the Hall of Mortality. If we can get them, we’ll be able to cover for our losses in the Path to Death in an instant.”

“But is it really true that One guild wasn’t able to get the first-user t.i.tles?”

Kun tilted his head and asked.

“Gale revealed that there hasn’t been a single league in the Hall of Mortality and the Hall of Gladiators yet. I think users belonging to one guild cannot create a league due to abusing issues.”

“There should have been ways if they looked into it…….”

“I don’t know why, but they decided to not to look for any loopholes. For us, that’s a good thing. Looks like their pride as the top guild is shooting through the skies, so…… this is a good opportunity for us.”

“Well, if One guild really intends to sleep in the shade…… it would only be proper for us to overtake them and finish the race first.” (T/N: Tortoise and the hare reference.)

Kun thought the same as Red Sun. The fact that One guild didn’t take over the halls was an opportunity for them.

The highest-ranking users knew about the first-user t.i.tles. To be exact, most of them couldn’t get the first-user t.i.tle since ‘a certain someone’ took them.

They all thought that ‘someone else probably took it first’, but never did they imagine that it was swiped clean by a single individual.

As the highest-ranking users all had one or two first-user t.i.tles, they desired for even more.

“Since we’re here for that, we’ll do exactly that.”

The conclusive reason why Red Sun and Kun could join hands was because there was content to share. Terriculum, with their raid-specialized team, would take the Hall of Mortality, while Red Sun had confidence in PvP rather than raids, so they would take the Hall of Gladiators.

The two guilds aimed for similar objectives. They had confident expressions as they were reading the expensive map that Sanghyuk had put up for sale.

‘They took the bait.’

Sanghyuk was secretly observing the users of Red Line and Terriculum. When they moved towards the halls, he realized that the bait he had scattered since a few weeks ago was finally being taken by Red Line and Terriculum.

The first-user t.i.tles that was still not taken.

This was the bait that Sanghyuk had prepared for them. It wasn’t fake though, as the first-user t.i.tles were indeed still there.

The reason Sanghyuk induced them to go there was to activate the two halls as soon as possible.

It was impossible to create a league by himself no matter what he did. Red Sun and Kun thought that Sanghyuk, no, One guild was being arrogant, but in truth, this was beyond Sanghyuk’s control.

‘I’ll get the first-user t.i.tles through them.’

Sanghyuk’s plans were simple. He threw the bait, and once someone took that bait, he would compete with them to get his hands on the stuff he wanted.

The reason he could think in such a simple manner was because he had complete confidence in his skills.

Sanghyuk had finally gotten the ancient knowledge’ Shadow Knight’ yesterday and had finished equipping Lone King’s items.

From skills to items, Lone King was, as Sanghyuk had intended, an a.s.sa.s.sin-style hunter.

Lone King hunts everything.

And the first prey was Red Line and Terriculum.

Red Sun, who had arrived at the Hall of Gladiators, first registered himself. The 8 members of the Red Line guild also registered themselves in the Hall of Mortality.

With that, an addition of 9 players had joined the Hall of Gladiators.

Having become gladiators, they first started learning about how to use the Hall of Gladiators.

Fortunately, NPCs at the Hall of Gladiators kindly told them how the hall worked.

The NPC told Red Sun that there was a league could be created in three battlefields. Of course, there were more battlefields available, but right now, only the three were open.

1vs1 infinite duel ‘Road of Attestation’

3vs3 infinite duel ‘Shadow Forest’

7vs7 battle ‘Lunar Shrine’

These were the three, that was available now, and would continue to be the most popular in the future. The Road of Attestation was especially treated like the battle that decided the strongest person of EL, and many people contended for its champions.h.i.+p.

Both the Hall of Gladiators and Hall of Mortality did not allow matches between members of the same guild, so to open a league, another guild was necessary.

“We wouldn’t lose to Terriculum right?”

Ludmilla, who managed to survive and arrive together with Red Sun at the Heroic Lands looked at Red Sun with a slightly worried expression.

“Terriculum will only answer the first match just to open the league. Of course, they would have to show that they are doing their best in order to prevent abusing…… but if we get beaten up by a raid-specialized guild, we should just all quit the game. In the end, our opponent will be One guild.”

Red Line and Terriculum decided to cross-support each other to create the league at the beginning.

It wasn’t to abuse the system. Both guilds knew that abusing the system may lead to critical consequences, so they had already negotiated that they would ‘do their best’.

“One Guild would try to take both Gladiator and Mortality, right?”

“Probably. That’s why we need to stomp on them on the get go. If they decide to give up Hall of Gladiators and go to the Hall of Mortality…… we’ll breeze through getting that champions.h.i.+p.”

Red Sun’s intentions were simple. Although he had negotiated with Terriculum and the rest of Line Illusion, he did not share everything with them.

Everything considered, what mattered was profit for himself and his guild.

“Let’s make a team first.”

Red Sun had experienced many other games than EL, and understood these kinds of colosseum-like contents well.

And he had considerable skills as well.

His VRA was around 240, and this nearly pro-gamer level. In actuality, he had worked as a pro-gamer in a few of DN games.

He had both experience and skill, so he was confident in his chances.

So, he decided to register himself first for the Road of Attestation.

‘Hall of Gladiators! This is my territory from now on!’

Red Sun was full of confidence……. However, before he even decided to take the champions.h.i.+p of the Hall of Gladiators, someone else had already pressed the ‘ready’ b.u.t.ton for all three battlefields.

[…3, 2, 1, 0. Being summoned to the battlefield.]

Red Sun was surprised to see that a match was going to be held as soon as he applied for the Road of Attestation. He did already talk to Terriculum about this, but he didn’t know that they were so quick to act.

However, when he read the name of the opposition, he became nervous.

The opponent was from One guild, it was a user named Lone King.

Although he had never heard of this name before, what mattered was that the opponent belonged to One guild.

Flash, light scattered everywhere, and a large pa.s.sageway appeared in front of him. The width of the pa.s.sageway was around 15m, and in the middle, there was a 1m-wide muddy path that extended out far.

The general feeling he got was that there was a small road inside of a jungle. A large red crystal was s.h.i.+ning behind his back, and in front of it was some kind of s.h.i.+eld that protected the crystal.

The rules were simple. Victory was given to the user that killed the other five times first, or destroying the red crystal after destroying the s.h.i.+eld.

The Road of Attestation was a rectangular-shaped battlefield, with a width of 15m and a length of 1km.

This size was the same all the time, but stuff like the terrain and the weather changed all the time. Although it was a jungle right now, there were many other kinds of terrain as well.

‘Lone King? I thought it would be Blake…… well, I just need to defeat whoever comes at me.’

Red Sun was confused at the unfamiliar name of ‘Lone King’, but stepped outside the s.h.i.+eld thinking that it didn’t matter that much.

Since this was his first time in the Road of Attestation, he was slightly nervous.

‘Well, PvP is all the same, isn’t it? Let’s just take it easy.’

Red Sun decided that he would take this easy and think as though he’s killing a player on ani ordinary field. However, this was a huge mistake. The Road of Attestation contained buff zones and debuff zones which fields didn’t have.

As such, even though they were both PvP, the approach of killing a player in a field, and killing one in the Road of Attestation was completely different. If he didn’t realize this quick enough, then he may be toyed around by the opponent without being able to do anything.

Red Sun took out two pistols and held them in both hands. These were his main weapons.

These pistols were called ‘Magic engineered guns’, and had clear advantages and disadvantages.

Red Sun was a double-soul user.

HIs first ancient knowledge was Gunman, and his second was b.l.o.o.d.y Hunter.

‘Let’s first turn on Blood Sense…….’

Blood Sense was one of the soul skills of b.l.o.o.d.y hunter, and it allowed the user to amplify the smell of blood and obtain information about the opponent through it.

This ability was more effective the more injuries the opponent had and bled ‘white light’(in-game blood). Instead, if the opponent didn’t have a single injury, all it allowed was the position of the enemy if they were close by.

Having activated Blood Sense, Red sun carefully walked on the narrow path and looked to his surroundings. He wasn’t a perfectly long-ranged attacker, nor was he a completely close-ranged attacker, he had attacks that were mid-range.

Actually, this kind of battle distance became both an advantage and a disadvantage according to circ.u.mstances. What was sure was that if he maintained his distance, he was able to put his opponent to helplessness.

‘You aren’t coming out? Heheh, you are trying to play hide-and-seek with me? You’ll regret that.’

Red Sun had complete trust in Blood Sense, and thought that he would be able to sense the oncoming enemy regardless of wherever he hid.

He intentionally didn’t go inside the forested areas, and moved on the narrow muddy path while maintaining his concentration.

‘I’m a hunter! No matter how well you hide in the dark, you will not be able to escape my senses!’

Red Sun expanded his Blood Sense as much as possible to calmly search for Lone King. He scanned through the jungle as though he was a hunter hunting for a hidden leopard.

Then, Red Sun’s sense of smell detected a faint smell of blood. After that, the information became visual, and a red human-shaped object appeared in front of him.

The distance was around 12m.

This distance was precisely to Red Sun’s liking.

‘Got ya!’

As soon as he discovered the enemy, Red Sun aimed his gun at the red shadow and pulled the trigger.

Find and shoot, the basics of a hunter.

The two magically engineered guns in Red Sun’s hands emitted blue magical flames and bullets headed towards the enemy.

Guns were strong weapons. Though, in the world of EL, their might was less than that of a bow’s in compensation for their rapid attack speed, that only applied to EL.

Because of this, Red Sun also didn’t think that he would be able to subdue the enemy with his first round of attack. He was planning to disturb the enemy with the first round and finish it with follow-up attacks.

In that sense, the two bullets that Red Sun had just fired were very satisfactory attacks. He was sure that the opponent wouldn’t be able to dodge his attacks.

Red Sun thought that because he had reverse-ambushed someone who was ambus.h.i.+ng him, it would be impossible for the enemy to defend or avoid his attacks.

However, his convictions were shattered immediately.

Pew, pew.

The opponent had actually dodged his attack. Not blocked, but dodged. If the opponent had defended, then that itself would be a move and would delay the next moves of the opponent, allowing Red Sun to continue attacking.

However, the opponent had actually dodged both of the bullets.

Not only that, he had not lost his momentum at all.

At this point, the distance between the two players would shrink rapidly, and Red Sun wouldn’t be able to attack properly.

However, Red Sun couldn’t stop attacking there, and had no choice but to shoot more. He shot four rounds.

However, as the enemy had already shrunk the distance, his aim had deviated severely, and the bullets all scattered in many directions.

When his second attack failed, the distance between him and Lone King was shrunk to a mere 5m.

‘Defend first!’

Red Sun immediately switched to a defensive stance. If he became greedy and maintained his offensive stance, then there was a chance that he may be done in instead, so this decision of his could be seen as quite wise.

He pulled his two guns to his chest and stepped according to the ‘Gunman backstep’ skill. He was thinking of distancing himself from Lone King.

Up until this point, Red Sun’s actions against Lone King didn’t seem to have any flaws or mistakes. He attacked first after finding the enemy, and he had immediately switched to a defensive stance once he had failed.

He definitely belonged to the top-notch players in regards to PvP.

However, the problem didn’t lay with him, but with his enemy. Lone King had forcefully created a problem for him.

The moment Red Sun backed off using Gunman backstep, Lone King sped up as though he had predicted that this would happen.

Of course, Red Sun hadn’t backed off without thinking of his next move. He was planning to switch stances again and attack with full force if the opponent decided to close in on him.

‘You want to close in on me? You’re looking for death.’

Red Sun did not hesitated and used one of his soul skill ‘Close-range bombardment’.

Using Close-range bombardment made his attack range very short, and his attack power weaker, but his continuous shooting speeds would increase rapidly.

In other words, he was able to fire his guns without restraint at extremely close range.

Red Sun and Lone King were within 3m of each other. Since the range of Close-range bombardment was 3m, Red Sun believed that his attack would definitely succeed.

However his convictions…… were broken again just like a curse.

Lone King had deflected a few of the bullets with the sword in his hand, and dodged the rest by twisting his body in a weird way.

Not a single one of the 16 rounds had hit Lone King’s body.

‘No, no way!’

Red Sun was flabbergasted by Lone King’s movement.

It was simply impossible to block or avoid his skill Close-range bombardment in such a short notice. At least, Red Sun thought so. However, his opponent, named Lone King, had achieved such a feat.

Not only that, he almost simultaneously reached out with his sword and drove the sword into Red Sun’s heart.

Red Sun felt the cold metal piercing his body. And unfortunately……. a ‘critical hit’ had occurred.