One Man Army

Engraving four Soul Holes was equivalent to declaring that he would be walking a path that no other users could have possibly imagined. Of course, even though the experience points required to level up was now down to 4 times instead of 8 thanks to the title ‘Unrelenting Challenger’, that didn’t mean that growth was easy.

In the beginning stages, he might not differ that much to the users with one Soul Hole, users with more than that mostly regretted in their 40s, otherwise known as the hell zone.

Only after getting through this zone would make the user a true top-tier player, but this wasn’t easy. Of course, there were many methods to get through this zone.

The easiest method was to borrow the power of real cash, and the most common method was to put in an insane amount of effort.

Both methods, once the hellzone was over, would allow enormous power boost for the extra Soul Holes.

When Sanghyuk worked as the director of the game team, more than 80% of the professional gamers were Double Souls and the remaining 20% were Triple Souls. There wasn’t even a single One Soul.

To classify further, the ‘top-tier’ pro gamers were comprised of 70% Triple Souls. The potential of Triple Souls was just that good.

That being the case, Sanghyuk had chosen Quadra Soul that no one else could perfect. This meant that he would be a special existence if he actually raised his character properly.

“Has it been 4 days since the server launched? I guess it’s about time rumors start spreading, then.”

The potential EL possessed as a game started being rumored for real around one week after EL’s open beta.

Of course, since the accessibility was so low, it took a few months for those rumors to bear fruit.

‘Actually, right now is the time when famous rankers in my previous life had just begun playing the game, or are in the game without knowing what they need to do.’

The fact that they had to find all the information within the game made the users considerably tired. Despite that, Raonsoft told the community that it was an unavoidable choice and did not look after their needs.

This was a very good thing for Sanghyuk.

“Thanks to that, I can monopolize many things since I know many important pieces of information.”

Muttered Sanghyuk and smiled in joy. What appeared in his mind were what the users referred to as the best things in his previous life.

Of course, not all of them had become rankers after they discovered those, but all the top ranking users had something that was evaluated as ‘the greatest’. Moreover, Sanghyuk was aiming for the best of those greatest items.

The most important thing is that he could actually acquire them right now.

“It looks like I’ll need to give up on sleeping for a while.

Even Sanghyuk could not know everything. That was why he didn’t know when someone acquired what.

This meant that he had to move quickly in order to discover those things first, and he was planning to sleep only for 2 hours a day.

Since he had rested and trained his body precisely for this, sleeping 2 hours a day for one or two months didn’t seem like it would be a problem.

‘First up…… is the First Mountaineer!’

Sanghyuk turned his head around to look at the sacred mountain Puyan standing behind Falcon City and nodded his head.

Puyan was one of the five mountains that symbolized the planet of Treenark. Its height was the lowest of the five, but it had the most symbolic meaning, so it was included in the five mountains.

Regardless of which of the five, climbing to the peak of one of these mountains would earn him a special title.

First Mountaineer! It was a unique-grade title to boot.

Although it had no prefix or postfix effects, there was a constant effect which was to increase all karma acquired by 20%.

Originally, this title was known to have been acquired by a top-tier ranker referred to as the ‘Climber’ in his previous life, and according to the rumors, he had got this title not in Puyan but another mountain.

The reason Sanghyuk knew this information was because the pro gamers in his charge had sometimes talked about quite a few pieces of old information.

The really important information wasn’t shared even between team members, but pieces of information that had no real meaning by that time were often shared a lot in private places and thanks to that, Sanghyuk had picked up quite a few pieces of information.

Normally, not many would challenge the mountain climbing even if they know that they would acquire a special title, but for Sanghyuk, who had roamed around the cliffs in search for herbs in Sword and Magic for over half a year, climbing Mount Puyan wasn’t something that difficult.

And most decisively, he was still level 10 right now and had no experience points (karma) at all, so he had nothing to lose even if he died.

Just in case, he had already put the Traveller’s Treasure Sword into the common bank of Falcon City, no, a 4 dimensional interspace provided to the Dimensional Traveller ‘Immortal’, so there were no items to lose either.

On top of that, Mount Puyan was the most sacred mountain that harbored a sleeping God so not to mention monsters, there weren’t even any beasts on the mountain.

The setting was that no puny beings could live in the sacred living place of a God. And thanks to that, Sanghyuk could try climbing Mount Puyan despite being level 10.

Since he had no pressure, he could daringly climb Mount Puyan. He had also invested all growth points he had piled until now to strength in order to climb Mount Puyan.

Since crawling up a near-vertical mountain required strength, this kind of investment was to be expected.

Eventually, he could arrive at the summit of Mount Puyan without even a single death. It was a fruitful result he had achieved after climbing non-stop for 20 hours.

You have climbed to the summit of one of the five mountains that symbolize Treenark, Mount Puyan. Your challenging mindset that has climbed to a place no one had conquered until now is qualified to become a model for others.

You have acquired the unique-grade title [First Mountaineer].

You have heard the voice of the God sleeping within the sacred mountain. This is a fragment that allows you to earn a legendary-grade quest.

“Whew, a legendary-grade quest? There was such a thing here?”

Having acquired an unexpected gain, Sanghyuk muttered in surprise and immediately opened the quest window.

Quest, ??? [Legendary]

– Mountain of the Sleeping God (Details)

– ???

– ???

– ???

“Legendary-grade fragmentary quest……”

Fragmentary quests were something that could only be activated after gathering all the fragments. They had very high difficulty and insane rewards. Sanghyuk never imagined that he would acquire something like that here.

“I never knew I’d get something like this here…….”

This was an unexpected bonus. Although this wasn’t a quest in his knowledge, the value of legendary-grade quests was priceless so it could be said that he had just acquired an enormous profit.

“Well, I guess I’ll keep it now and challenge it when I can later.”

Challenging a legendary-grade fragmentary quest right now would be insane.

Title – ‘First Mountaineer’

Grade – Unique

Description – Your challenging mindset that has climbed to a place no one had conquered until now is qualified to become a model for others.

Effects – [Prefix: N/A] [Postfix: N/A] [Constant effect: >Challenging Mindset(S) Acquired karma increases by 20%.<]

Sanghyuk opened his title window and checked the effects of ‘First Mountaineer’ before nodding in satisfaction. Although it was slightly inferior to the Unrelenting Challenger he got from the Endless Plains despite the two being of the same grade, this was plenty amazing in itself.

It only looked inferior because Unrelenting Challenger was insane.

“With this, I can escape the pressure of being a Quadra Soul.”

With First Mountaineer, Sanghyuk could now raise his Quadra Soul avatar almost like a Double Soul. Of course, it would be more difficult than the actual Double Soul users, but at least he would have it easier compared to Triple Soul users.

Adding a few of the karma increase titles he knew, he felt like he could raise the karma increase rate to almost 30%.

“Phew, oh yeah, climbing down will be hard too. Should I just jump off?”

Jumping off would make him arrive at the ground in no time flat. However, he couldn’t do that. Even Sanghyuk didn’t want to experience virtual death if he could, and since he just acquired karma through the adventure, he couldn’t jump because of the things he had gained.

He calmed his breath for a while and enjoyed the view from the summit of Mount Puyan to his heart’s content before climbing down the steep cliffs again.

Normally, people would have saved this scenery in the form of photos or videos with the photograph function, but Sanghyuk was quite unrelated to such trivial emotions, so he thought that viewing was enough.

Having climbed down mount Puyan, Sanghyuk returned to Falcon City again. Well, he tried to. What greeted him before Falcon City were three users who seemed to have a lot of complaints about the world.

In order to level up in EL, karma was required. This was mentioned before. However, what was interesting was that there were two different types of this karma.

One was the karma of good that could be acquired through means similar to how you acquire experience in other games. This was very similar to those ‘experience points’ and they naturally gathered by killing monsters or doing quests.

The other type of karma was the complete opposite.

It was referred to as ‘black karma’ or ‘evil karma’, and this could be gathered through evil acts such as killing other users or NPCs.

What was interesting that once a user leveled up even once through black karma, or gathered over 10,000 black karma, that user would become an ‘malefactor’. Not only those malefactors would become no longer capable of using facilities in cities, but there would also be bounties on their heads as well.

Of course, there were contents aimed at malefactors as well as cities that only housed malefactors. And later malefactors would gather and form a big faction, but in any case, there were more demerits than merits in becoming an malefactor.

The only way to come back to normal after becoming an malefactor was to go to the Hall of Souls and forfeit everything including one’s karma to the Mother God of Earth and the Sovereign God of Heaven and undergo penitence.

Penitence would not only make the user revert to level 10, but they would also have to sit still and do nothing for as long as the evil karma still remained so usually no one underwent penitence.

Not only that, malefactors could be freely attacked by normal users, and 20% of their black karma would be stolen by the killer if they died.

20% of the entire black karma meant that high-level users may lose several levels through one death.

On top of that, the malefactor would drop a random item, so malefactors feared death the most.

Of course, there were good things in becoming malefactors as well.

It was that…… they could not only gather evil karma through attacking normal users, but they could also steal items from normal users as well. They could also attack those treated like NPCs by normal users and gain profit.

For example, they could hunt elves, dwarves, hobbits and other intellectual species that traded with normal users as though they were monsters. They could only acquire items and no karma through hunting monsters, but hunting special races like those would net them items as well as evil karma.

The reason most malefactors chose that path was because they could steal items from other users, and the second was that they could attack other special races as well as monsters.

These two reasons made up most of the reasons why people became malefactors.

And naturally, it was easier to become malefactors when people had low levels, so after EL’s open beta service launched, there were quite a few complaints about the malefactors’ indefinite PK (Player killing).

‘I forgot that now’s around the time malefactors were on the rise.’

Sanghyuk made a bitter smile while looking at the three users that blocked his way. The three all had red-colored eyes.

Red eyes…… this was a sign that they were malefactors.

“Now I can’t even be bothered to explain anymore. Just consider yourself unlucky.”

They seemed like they already had a lot of experience killing other users.

They were quite upfront about it…… however, Sanghyuk knew very well that they wouldn’t be able to roam so freely soon enough.