Efficient Farming (2)
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The most basic farming method in Infinity Black was field hunting.
It wasn’t that raids or instanced dungeons didn’t exist, but unless you could put together an elite roster, the efficiency was surprisingly poor.
They all claimed they were veterans. So how the hell couldn’t they dodge that?
It had been a pattern anyone could break just by using their items.
Was thirty won more precious than ten minutes of their time?
Only those who had suffered it truly understood the hell of infinite retries!
With as many enemies as I had, gathering people was already a chore, so that option never really appealed. It wasn’t that it lacked fun—fighting other people was simply more entertaining.
Party Leader: ExtinctionTorch (Sniper)
FundoshiManiac (Fighter)
DadToGokturk (Berserker)
Ga-wol (Assassin)
MountainBird (Bard)
The party composition was more than satisfactory. The Fighter and Berserker would hold the front line while the Sniper and I handled the real damage. With a Bard covering support, it was a textbook setup.
While the party members exchanged the usual polite greetings, my eyes drifted toward the chat window.
- This is Void, guild master of SSA. I heard about you from DongjakStation.
- Talked it over with the upper guild. The Fighter is our dispatched member.
- Please look after our youngest. Once the war is settled and this business is done, I’ll contact you again.
“Upper guild” was slang for a higher-ranked guild. And that Fighter, FundoshiManiac, had set his guild name to private. If things turned ugly, they would use him as an excuse to step in.
Well, messy faction wars were none of my concern. I only needed to do the work I was paid for.
A rare chance to farm for myself and pocket cash on top of it. Gathering party members for top-tier hunting grounds was a pain in itself, and I had dumped that entire annoying stage onto someone else.
All I had to do was milk the free experience here, and if things went south, I could just carve up one streamer and call it a day.
Party leader ExtinctionTorch spoke in a businesslike tone.
“We’ll take three minutes for personal prep and start on the hour. Ga-wol will handle the pull, main tank is Fundoshi.”
“Got it.”
“Don’t forget your exp and currency buffs.”
No one wasted breath. It was a party with a clear purpose.
The moment the clock hit the hour, I moved first. The Fighter followed at a measured distance.
This place, the Ancient Weapon Hangar, was one of the best hunting grounds at present. Infinity Black was a game where raising your specs was hard and the growth curve dragged on forever. Only dedicated addicts could even set foot here.
And true to their nature as addicts, the party members understood their roles perfectly and moved accordingly.
A cool breeze wrapped around my calves. The Bard’s buff landed right on cue.
Blessing of the Gale has settled upon you.
All action speed increased by 10%. Movement speed increased by 15%.
Caster: MountainBird
The hunt itself wasn’t difficult. As the most mobile member, I used my Chain-Sickle to aggro and pull the monsters. Once enough had gathered, the Fighter trailing behind planted a main skill and drew their focus. The Berserker’s job was to shove them together so they didn’t scatter. When everything was set, the Sniper and I reaped their lives.
If anything went wrong in that sequence, health bars would evaporate in an instant—but none of these people made such amateur mistakes. Field hunting had to be safe and efficient.
And once the mechanical rhythm settled in, small talk gradually opened up.
The first to speak was the Bard, MountainBird. As a relatively low-pressure support, the long silence must have felt tedious.
“Ga-wol.”
“Yes?”
“Are you the real Ga-wol?”
“Is there a fake one?”
This game didn’t allow duplicate nicknames by default. There were plenty of ways to hide a nickname or guild, though, so it wouldn’t have been strange if some eccentric was out there cosplaying me. Impostors did show up in the community from time to time.
Looking back, it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. Maybe that was why my tone had dropped a little. The blond-haired Halfling shook her head rapidly.
“No! That’s not what I meant. You’ve been pretty famous lately.”
“I’d rather not talk about the videos…”
“It’s not that. I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time.”
“Huh? What?”
“A fan. Our guild got dragged into a war once and was having a rough time. Then you hit us with a raid and the whole thing got resolved. I was really grateful.”
Urgh.
Careful—keep the expression in check. Being at the front of the party was lucky. When I pulled far enough ahead of the others, I opened MountainBird’s info window.
Guild: LesserPanda. A name I’d never heard, yet the member count was large. A guild that took in newbies without any join requirements, by the looks of it. The more guilds like that a game had, the better—but they were also easy prey.
Unfortunately, Infinity Black’s law of the jungle didn’t cut beginners any slack. Even when the situation felt unfair, the moment newbies started taking losses, the officers usually ended up bowing their heads. In field ecology terms, they were the herbivores.
They must have been getting thoroughly grazed when my contract happened to overlap.
“It wasn’t intentional or anything.”
“Still. It wasn’t just once you helped us, either. I’ve always wanted to thank you properly someday.”
“I don’t exactly play this game clean myself…”
“I’ve heard. But herbivores like us never got hurt by you, right? Anyway, I’m rooting for you.”
“Heh. Thanks.”
So days like this actually came along. The word “fan” left a strange little flutter in my chest.
I didn’t leave weak guilds alone out of some grand principle. There simply wasn’t a reason to. My clients were usually at least wolf-level. No one paid premium rates because they couldn’t even catch a rabbit. Killing streamers was the same—popping the popular ones was far more entertaining. Stepping on something too weak just didn’t taste right.
You have obtained a Complete Ancient Weapon Power Source.
And to top off my good mood, a system message arrived. Feeling my game balance fatten up, I put even more force into the hunt.
In general, a party hunt was measured in one-hour units. At top-tier grounds like this, people often stayed for hours once they gathered, but there were always those who wanted a short break.
While the Berserker went off for a smoke, I sat in the safe zone and scrolled through the streaming platform.
- We’ve been hunting a while and he still hasn’t shown.
- Honestly, I thought he’d come within the hour.
The stream I needed to check was Dongmicham’s. He was someone I might run into over this matter. There was no guarantee of a fight, but looking him over in advance wouldn’t hurt.
The search, however, turned up nothing live. He had the stream off for now.
I set an alert so I would know even while hunting, then adjusted the voice channel options. From now on, only ExtinctionTorch would hear my voice. The chat I planned to type would go on Luce’s stream.
I shrank the window and stuck it next to the minimap. That way Luce could still see it, and my awareness wouldn’t slip. Perfect placement.
“Can’t say yet. That Dongmicham guy’s stream is off.”
- He might still be logged into the game, though. All right, got it.
“So how’d you end up tangled with him? If it’s a hard question, you don’t have to answer.”
- Ah, I used to be in his guild. This was before I went into the military…
“Sounds like things went south.”
- The way he acts is a little—no, a lot—like that. Then at the base I ran into big brother DongjakStation.
A fairly dramatic story came through.
Originally, DongjakStation and ExtinctionTorch had been on opposing sides. In the field they had even exchanged friendly conversations laced with heavy swearing. Then both of them got called up for mandatory service, and ExtinctionTorch ended up as DongjakStation’s junior.
When he first learned that, he had expected vicious hazing. Even if not that, he thought the atmosphere at work would stay awkward the whole time. Instead, DongjakStation took it with surprising generosity, and they became close in a hurry.
- Now that my service is done, I switched over completely. But you know how it is in this scene—they don’t let traitors go clean. I’m in the middle of the initiation rite right now.
“So that’s why you didn’t fight him yourself and called the upper guild instead.”
As I had said, even inside the game, justification mattered. In a situation where you had pulled a guild member away, you had to allow the other side a certain amount of righteous anger. Revenge couldn’t last forever anyway; after a few weeks of suffering it usually fizzled out. SSA’s passive response made sense too.
“DongjakStation must really value you. Looking at how he called the upper guild and even stuck me on you.”
- Well… when I left the guild I stole a few unique items on the way out. I was an officer.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
- If I die I might drop the items, so they’re protecting me. But if they openly cover for me, they lose too much of the moral high ground, right?
Exactly the kind of story I knew from the castle-siege scene. That thick, acrid stench of garbage.
How nostalgic.