One Man Army

Sanghyuk read books for a few hours in the Great Library. The books he read were the ten books of the ‘Chivalry’.

The moment he flipped the last page of book 10, the system message he was waiting for had finally appeared before his eyes.

You have acquired all necessary knowledge for knights.

You have fulfilled all requirements to acquire the Ancient Knowledge ‘Knight’.

Will you absorb the Ancient Knowledge ‘Knight’ into an empty Soul Hole? Please decide within 5 minutes.

If he didn’t choose within 5 minutes, the Ancient Knowledge would return the ten books of ‘Chivalry’. Of course, he could bring out the same message once he read the ten books again.

“Absorb.”

However, there was no need to think about this now. After all, he had come here precisely in order to acquire this.

The Ancient Knowledge, ‘Knight’, will be absorbed into the first Soul Hole.

You have ‘3’ remaining Soul Holes.

*Shhhhhhhh*.

The Ancient Knowledge immediately became a strand of light and filled a part of Sanghyuk’s soul.

Having acquired his first Ancient Knowledge, Sanghyuk immediately opened the system window to check the basic abilities that came with the Ancient Knowledge as well as the Soul skills that were generated with it.

Ancient Knowledge ‘Knight’

: The power of knights, passed from the ancient times, has seeped into your soul. Not only will your body become sturdier, but your mentality will also be enhanced according to the nobility of knights.

Effects: Strength of Knights(C)[Strength, Health, Agility, Endurance increases.], Mentality of Knights (C)[ [Mentality increases and resistance to mental attacks increases.], Craftsmanship of Knights(C)[Proficiency in sword and shield increases.]

Low-rank Sword Mastery [Constant effect]

– Becomes able to wield all types of swords more proficiently.

[Proficiency : 0]

Low-rank Triple Slash

– Rapidly slashes three times with the sword.

– Cooldown (9 seconds)

[Proficiency : 0]

Low-rank Blunt Sword Block

– Defends the opponent’s attack with the flat of the sword.

– Cooldown (20 seconds)

[Proficiency : 0]

Low-rank Charge

– Instantly charge forward by 4m.

– Cooldown (30 seconds)

[Proficiency : 0]

Sanghyuk acquired a total of four Soul skills through the Ancient Knowledge. Although they were all low ranked, Soul skill ranks could be raised by increasing the proficiency so the power behind those skills would change according to how much effort Sanghyuk puts in.

Naturally, raising proficiency required using the skill frequently. Skills had a lot of power just by themselves, so they were treated as important in EL battles.

For example, using the Triple Slash skill was much faster and stronger than just normally slashing three times, and blocking with the sword was much easier and more effective through the use of Blunt Sword Block.

Instead, in the case of knights, they would use up much more stamina through the use of skills, so they may get more tired using the skills than not, but even after factoring that in, skills were better used than not.

“These are really nostalgic skills.”

Sanghyuk made a bitter smile while reading the information on the four Soul skills.

‘I should do the quick setting first, right?’

There were two ways to use skills; one was to use the skills just as they were.

If Sanghyuk used the Triple Slash skill while he was holding a sword, his body would move according to the Triple Slash movements. The other skills were the same.

However, using skills this way would make the character’s movements too obvious and predictable. This was why the quick setting existed.

Quick setting allowed to skills to activate naturally through movements.

For example, if Sanghyuk quickly slashed out three times then that movement itself would become a Triple Slash skill and activate. This was called the quick setting and in fact, it wasn’t easy to use.

For this reason quick setting was treated like a specialty for professional gamers or high-ranked users who weren’t that far behind.

Sanghyuk was no professional gamer, but he was once an expert veiled in mystery that overwhelmed the professional gamers, so he used quick settings as well. Of course, he became unable to use them even if he wanted to when his VRA was crippled, but his sense from then still remained.

Of course, it wasn’t like there was a huge difference in using quick settings and using skills normally. However, in the world of pro gamers where victory and defeat was decided with minute differences, the usability was a very big thing.

Sanghyuk took out his sword in an empty lot in Falcon City and started making quick sets. Although this was obvious, the quick setting was done through one’s abilities alone.

In other words, if a user couldn’t find the mysterious feeling that was felt when skills were naturally sublimed into one’s movements, it was impossible to make a quick set.

Sanghyuk swung his sword or charged forward in order to apply the skills into his natural movements.

Actually, the other users didn’t even know that there was such thing as a quick setting. To be exact, they knew that there was something called the ‘quick setting’ as there was a menu in the system window, but they didn’t know how that worked.

It would take around 10 days more for the intuitive users to find out how quick setting works, but it would take more time to actually use it properly.

On the other hand, Sanghyuk finished quick setting all of his skills in just an hour. This was also thanks to the difference in experience and talent.

“Tch, I’m quite rusty. I’d have finished these low ranked skill in a flash before.”

However, the person in question didn’t seem to be satisfied. Since he spent a lot of time as a cripple, he couldn’t help his senses at his peak dulling a little.

“Phew, looks like I should stop here today.”

Sanghyuk was already logged in for 16 hours. Thanks to the Game Addiction Prevention Law, all users would be forcefully logged out when they were in continuous access for 17 hours. Since users were forcefully prevented from logging in if they didn’t rest 2 hours per 24 hours, they had to rest at least 2 hours a day.

Having logged out, Sanghyuk took a short nap. No matter how much stamina he had built up through exercise until now, he still needed minimum amounts of sleep.

He woke a little less than two hours later and immediately prepared some high-calorie cereals, vital vitamins, and low-fat milk to eat a meal that didn’t taste good but had high nutrition. Then, he looked at the various game communities while eating.

[Play EL. Play it twice. It’s super awesome.]

[I know Eternal Life is good, but it’s too expensive.]

[EL is definitely fun but it’s too hard. Won’t someone upload an initial guideline?]

[There are a couple walkthroughs in InGamez.]

[InGamez’s walkthroughs aren’t anything of value. The best thing is to make your own walkthrough by playing.]

[Aaah, I want to play it so much!]

[Hey, is this game free-PK? Why the heck are there so many red-eyed guys?]

[The latest trend is malefactors.]

……

……

Sanghyuk tried going to InGamez mid-way.

[How many Soul Holes do you need to engrave?]

[Are there any good quests for beginners?]

[How do you level up at the beginning? Also, isn’t there some equipment that you can acquire relatively easily?]

[Someone please tell me how to get Ancient Knowledge.]

[Does anyone know what this ‘Quick setting’ is?]

[Are there any penalties to becoming a malefactor?]

……

……

InGamez wasn’t that different. There was a walkthrough but it was minimal and it was flooded with questions.

“So they still haven’t grasped it yet properly.”

It had only been one week since the launch of the open beta, so it was natural for the users to have more questions than answers.

What was shocking was that EL’s free open beta would end service tomorrow.

Of course, even after the open beta finished, Endless Plains could still be played for free, but they had to pay when coming over to Treenark from the plains.

“Oh yeah, now that I think about it, the guys at Raonsoft…… they didn’t have anything like paid event packaging or anything, didn’t they? Wow, now that I look back at it, they had some ridiculous confidence……. Were they actually that confident?”

Normally, other games would launch some kind of an event or the other when starting official service, but Raonsoft just started off their official service without any special event.

Not to mention special events, there was nothing like discount cash products. Thanks to that, they received countless complaints, but Raonsoft always held to their beliefs.

Before it was revealed that the single largest investment company, SJ, were behind their backs later, many people thought that they were doing a dangerous challenge.

However, Raonsoft’s non-intervention policy actually succeeded later. They didn’t even monitor the players inside either.

All they did was to monitor in-game bugs or illegal external software. The rest was decided by the gamers’ free will.

Actually, this was only possible due to the perfection of the game. If some half-assed game used the same non-intervention policy, then they would have failed for sure.

Sanghyuk read down the articles in InGamez while shoving various vitamin and nutrition packs into his mouth. Since he wasn’t going to stop playing games after just one or two days, he was putting a considerable amount of thoughts into his health.

Having finished resting, Sanghyuk immediately entered the capsule and logged into EL. He had acquired the Ancient Knowledge as well as the Soul skills. Since he had finished the quick settings as well, the only thing he had to do now…… was to hunt the malefactors down.

Ten days into the official service…….

That was how long the malefactors lasted. After that, the upper-level users who were experimenting with various things until now or were leveling up quietly would properly start their malefactor hunting and it would take a week for the malefactor users to be wiped out.

‘If they get wiped out this time, then it would be difficult to see malefactors at all for quite a while, so…… I need to finish the hunt in one week and get the title.’

Sanghyuk thought that now was the greatest time to hunt them down.

Once he missed this opportunity, it was very probable that he would not be able to get his First Malefactor Hunter title.

“Should I visit the Valley of the Dead first?”

Valley of the Dead was one of the closest hunting zones near Falcon City. The majority of the monsters that spawned there were various ghosts and as long as a user wasn’t afraid of ghosts it would be easy to hunt them and get a pretty good amount of karma as well.

With that being the case, many users naturally flocked to there. It was just that the world of EL was so vast that even that many users didn’t make it feel like it was crowded.

Actually, just the size of the Valley of the Dead was equivalent to 5~7 hunting zones put together from other games.

Even when considering the Valley of the Dead was constructed for the beginner users, it was still ridiculously wide. There were around 10 more hunting zones the size of Valley of the Dead around Falcon city, so there was no lack of monsters in hunting zones despite the exponential increase in simultaneous user log ins.

All this was possible thanks to the fact that the planet of Treenark was around 40 times bigger when compared to the entire world map of other games.

Travellers have appeared in a vast world.

Was it because of the freedom they were given? The users instinctively(?) started doing bad things first. And that was how the majority of malefactors were born…….

However, since the basic penalty of malefactors was so bad, the world of their rule couldn’t last long.