“Wow, How Is This Even Possible?”
“Wow, how is this even possible?” Kim Ji-sahn muttered without thinking.
Honestly, when Tae-hyun had told Cain, “Take your clothes off, go over there, and dance,” Ji-sahn had assumed Tae-hyun was finally trying to get Cain killed.
And yet the Holy Knights of the Sadiq Order had actually fallen for it.
“I told you, people fall for this stuff more easily than you'd think.” Tae-hyun said it as if it were nothing.
You have successfully deceived a powerful enemy.
Your Fraud skill has increased in level.
In Fantasy Online 2, NPCs were practically indistinguishable from real people.
That meant if you pulled a con the way you would on an actual person, it worked.
Of course, it wasn't as if Tae-hyun had just done it recklessly.
The harmony of his Speech skill and his Fraud skill!
They were skills that barely leveled even when other players deliberately tried to grind them.
But Tae-hyun had already pushed both to Intermediate.
Naturally, he had every reason to be confident when doing something like this.
Of course, to people who didn't know that, Tae-hyun's tricks just looked completely insane.
“Let's move. If we waste time, we'll get caught.”
At Tae-hyun's words, the knights and blacksmiths surged forward and stepped into the valley along the mountain ridge.
The inside of the Valley of Despair and Sorrow was made up of countless paths and caves.
It was the kind of place where finding the right route was difficult, and attacking from outside was nearly impossible.
You have entered the dungeon: Valley of Despair and Sorrow.
Logout will be restricted for a period of time.
If you log out, you will be forcibly expelled from the dungeon and a penalty will be applied.
“T-Tae-san, sir. You do know where you're going, right?”
Watching Tae-hyun stride through the tangled maze of paths without hesitation, Woo Jeong-sik finally asked, unable to hide his anxiety.
“Why? You don't trust me?”
“...No! That's not it at all!”
Afraid Tae-hyun might seize on any opening to mess with him, Woo Jeong-sik immediately waved both hands and denied it.
“Sounds like you don't trust me.”
“I said that's not it!”
Tae-hyun was finding his way with Divine Foresight.
It couldn't take him precisely wherever he wanted, but at the very least, a red line was better than a white one.
“I-Intruders!”
“How did intruders get in here?!”
“Call the others!”
At that moment, Holy Knights of the Sadiq Order appeared from the far end of the cave.
They were so obviously unprepared for enemies to appear here that they looked stunned out of their minds.
The enemy has encountered you at a moment they never expected.
They are temporarily thrown into a state of confusion.
“Take them all down!”
With that shout, Tae-hyun charged.
“Yes, sir!”
At the thought that they were finally getting to fight a real fight, the knights answered with open excitement.
Intimidate
Bonus effect applied because the enemies are confused.
Intimidation successful.
“Aaaagh!”
“Lord Sadiq, grant us strength!”
“Burn those bastards to ashes!”
Thrown into panic by Intimidate, the Holy Knights of Sadiq fumbled around trying to draw their weapons.
But Tae-hyun had already reached them.
Whumm!
Meteor lands a direct blow.
The Sadiq Holy Knight took the full force of Tae-hyun's all-out swing with his longsword, Meteor.
Tae-hyun immediately followed up with his buff skill, Lucky Strike.
Then came the consecutive hits.
Circle of Attack!
Pakpakpakpak!
In an instant, the Sadiq Holy Knight turned gray and collapsed.
You have defeated a dungeon enemy.
Fame increases by 1.
Divinity increases by 1.
“...!”
Maybe because he'd defeated a Sadiq Holy Knight, a message window appeared saying his Divinity had increased.
For Tae-hyun, who needed to raise his Divinity as quickly as possible, it was a very welcome reward.
Then what about the others too?
Tae-hyun turned his head, ready to take down the rest of the Sadiq Holy Knights.
But...
Boom! Boom! Bam bam bam!
“Die, you wicked bastards!”
“You won't even lay a finger on Tae-hyun!”
The knights surged forward in a pack and focused their attacks on the Holy Knights.
Before Tae-hyun could even stretch out a hand, they finished everything off in a neat, efficient, utterly textbook display of combat.
They were carrying out his orders exactly as he'd given them.
“Tae-hyun, sir. We defeated them.”
“What do you think?”
The knights looked at Tae-hyun with faces plainly begging for praise.
Tae-hyun had no choice but to nod.
“R-Right. Good work.”
Even Tae-hyun couldn't very well get angry at them for doing exactly what he'd told them to do.
“Kraaagh! The curse of Sadiq...!”
“The flames of Sadiq will burn you all!”
After that, Tae-hyun's party moved swiftly through the caves.
The most common enemies were small groups of four or five Sadiq Holy Knights.
Those enemies were easy to defeat.
Tae-hyun's party was overwhelmingly stronger than they were.
The knights might have been mocked plenty outside, but in terms of raw combat power, they were by no means weak.
They were absolutely worth bringing along.
Every time enemies appeared, Tae-hyun shouted first.
“I'm fighting this one! Everyone wait!”
The knights looked startled, but an order was an order.
With the knights lined up behind him like intimidating background scenery, Tae-hyun charged in alone.
Pupupupak!
Evasion successful.
Evasion successful.
Critical hit triggered.
It made for a bizarre sight—Tae-hyun fighting in front while the knights stood behind him holding their weapons, looking murderous but doing absolutely nothing.
But Tae-hyun himself was deadly serious.
You have defeated a dungeon enemy.
Fame increases by 1.
Divinity increases by 1.
His Divinity kept steadily rising.
And every now and then, different message windows would appear as well.
You have successfully continued fighting while at low HP.
⚡ Constitution:+1
If he fought on the edge while badly injured, sometimes he'd get bonus Constitution like that.
Of course, the reason Tae-hyun's HP had dropped so low wasn't because the Sadiq Holy Knights were hitting him.
Self-harm.
Once Tae-hyun realized that the enemies coming out of the cave were weaker than expected, he decided to exploit them as much as possible.
Even if there weren't many of them at once, the Sadiq Holy Knights were excellent bundles of experience.
If they couldn't reliably damage him, then this kind of thing was fair game too.
Tae-hyun was injuring himself on purpose, dropping his HP, and then fighting the Sadiq Holy Knights in that state.
Naturally, everyone else stared at him like he was completely insane.
“Is... is it okay for him to do that? If he dies doing this...”
“Isn't it fine, since they can't hit him anyway?”
The blacksmiths muttered under their breath.
If Tae-hyun died here, they were basically doomed too, so their worry was only natural.
But Tae-hyun fought on as if his critically low HP were a lie, taking no further damage.
And whenever his HP recovered along the way, he injured himself all over again.
To anyone watching, it looked like a constant brush with death.
To Tae-hyun, though, it wasn't risky in the slightest. It was obvious.
The Sadiq Holy Knights coming out right now are too weak to damage me.
The Holy Knights in here were far weaker than the Sadiq Holy Knights he'd faced in the royal palace.
If those had been elites, then these were rookies.
The difference between them was basically the gap between elite monsters and trash mobs.
Of course their curses were weaker. Of course all their other skills were weaker too.
Tae-hyun had grasped that after only a few fights.
Since most of their attacks missed anyway, there was no reason to be afraid.
Tae-hyun fought without mercy.
You have successfully continued fighting at extremely low HP.
⚡ Constitution:+1
💨 Stamina:+1
Those message windows popped up every now and then.
If other people saw him, they'd think Tae-hyun was fooling around.
But Tae-hyun was calculating everything down to the last detail.
We've been inside for a while, mowing down Holy Knights like this, and still no stronger enemies have shown up. That means most of them really are outside the valley.
The fact that the Sadiq Holy Knights and priests hadn't come flooding in despite all the time that had passed meant one thing.
He still had some breathing room.
And if he had time, then he had to use it wisely.
For raising stats.
“Kuh-hurk!”
“Lord Sadiq!”
└─ Skill Level:3
Intermediate Swordsmanship had reached Level 3.
Tae-hyun busily checked the message windows that appeared from time to time, along with his stats and skill windows.
Tae-hyun understood the Legendary Class he held very well.
It was a class that suffered from massive disadvantages when leveling up, but was far more favorable when it came to raising stats and skills.
If that was the case, then he had to exploit that advantage as much as possible.
“Lesser Dark Arrow!”
Black mana gathered in Tae-hyun's hand, then transformed into an arrow and shot out.
Its target was the back of a fleeing Sadiq Holy Knight.
Lesser Dark Arrow lands cleanly.
You have successfully used Lesser Dark Arrow.
Its skill level increases.
Black Magic increases.
Normally, when magic skills were still low-level, spells failed all the time.
> Magic use failed due to insufficient magic skill level.
> You take damage.
> -20 seconds: Magic use disabled.
Those were the penalties that tormented beginner mages.
Using magic more advanced than your actual level was naturally difficult.
But that wasn't a story that applied to Tae-hyun.
His absurd Luck made sure he succeeded unless things were truly hopeless.
Your Black Magic skill level is low, so penalties are applied to spell usage.
Your high Luck has allowed the spell to succeed.
Dark Arrow was much weaker than just walking up and hitting them himself.
Lucky Strike didn't apply to magic attacks.
But there was one reason he kept using it anyway.
The corpse is far too strong compared to your current Black Magic skill level.
You cannot use this summon.
It was to level up his Black Magic.
Right now, his Black Magic skill level was so low that he couldn't even use the corpses of the Holy Knights appearing here.
It wasn't a case of the difficulty being high and the spell merely failing often.
It was a level where using it at all was outright impossible.
So he had to raise it steadily whenever he had the chance.
Whenever Sadiq Holy Knights appeared, he fired Dark Arrow, then rushed in, took hits, and swung his sword...
Tae-hyun repeated that cycle over and over and over again without the slightest sign of getting tired of it.
So much so that the blacksmiths watching from behind were the ones getting exhausted.
After one fight ended, Cain cautiously approached Tae-hyun and spoke.
Looking at the enemies appearing now, he'd started feeling tempted.
“If I help fight too...”
“What?”
“N-No, I just mean, watching from the back is kind of boring...”
“What?”
“...I said just watching is great too!”
Tae-hyun didn't say much of anything—he just kept repeating “What?” until Cain shut his mouth.
Cain lowered his head, dejected.
Still... why aren't the others coming even after all this time?
As he cut down rookie Sadiq Holy Knights, Tae-hyun thought to himself.
Quite a bit of time had passed since they entered the valley and started taking down every Holy Knight they saw.
Under normal circumstances, alarms should have been blaring through the valley—Intruders are inside! Find them and kill them!—and elite Holy Knights and priests should have come swarming in.
Of course, he already knew that most of them were outside the valley right now.
Still, by now I figured some stronger ones would've shown up.
And Tae-hyun was right.
Normally, if someone rampaged through the place like this, the Sadiq elite Holy Knights should have descended in force.
But right now they were too busy dealing with the players outside the valley.
> Intruders have appeared inside the valley!
> What? How many are there?
> About one party...
> That's not even that many! Tell the ones inside to wipe them out themselves!
> Can't you see what's happening on the front lines right now?!
The commander of the Sadiq Holy Knights had underestimated Tae-hyun because he didn't realize just how dangerous he was.
Which, naturally, made Tae-hyun very happy.
He cut down everything in his path and pushed deeper and deeper into the dungeon.
The traps and labyrinth inside the valley were completely useless.
In a situation like this, Divine Foresight was practically a cheat skill.
The Sadiq Holy Knight commander had assumed that even if one party got inside, they wouldn't be able to fight properly.
After all, the valley's interior was packed with traps and mazelike passageways.
He had expected them to spend forever just trying to find the route.
But Tae-hyun and his group were advancing through the valley's twisted passages at nearly the shortest possible speed, driving straight toward the center.