The Man Who Wiped Out the Rabbits
It hadn’t even been that long since Chapter 16 had gone up, and it was already closing in on a hundred million views.
That was just how enormous the impact of the server’s first Legendary Class was.
“Damn... she really was born for this.”
Tae-hyun clicked his tongue in admiration and nodded.
Most players watching the video he’d just seen would’ve focused on the flashy spectacle of the Legendary Class, or on Lee Se-yeon’s items.
But Tae-hyun had his eyes on something else.
Her control.
She was still incredible.
That instant sense for one-on-one combat. The strategic eye for raising a character. And now, on top of all that, she’d obtained a Legendary Class.
She’d already been active as a gaming broadcaster for a long time. She was popular enough to make most celebrities look second-rate, and now she’d caused a stir on this level...
Her popularity’s really going to blow through the ceiling now!
More than envy, what he felt was fascination.
So people like that really do exist in the world.
From what he’d heard, she also came from an absurdly wealthy family.
A great family, stunning looks, ridiculous gaming skill...
Come to think of it, aside from the stunning looks, Tae-hyun had all of that too.
Can I still catch up if I start now?
For the first time, he started to worry a little.
Lee Se-yeon was almost certainly already over Level 100.
And sure, all the attention was on her because of the Legendary Class, but plenty of other rankers had already secured Heroic Classes too.
They were quietly leveling as well.
Right now they were lying low because the timing wasn’t right, but the instant they cleared some huge quest, they’d be on stream too.
Several guilds were already running their mouths about capturing a castle and becoming lords.
No matter how skilled Tae-hyun was, the gap still had to be manageable if he wanted to beat somebody.
A Level 1 player couldn’t defeat a Level 100 player just by having better control.
“Maybe starting a little late was a mistake... Ah, whatever. I’ll just catch up from here.”
* * *
But Tae-hyun didn’t rush off to grind.
I can level later. What matters first are quests and skill growth.
Players blinded by levels all did the same thing as soon as they started: ran into the field, hunted monsters, and obsessed over entering dungeons.
And by doing that, they missed all kinds of quests.
Even if he grew a little more slowly, the right path was to collect every stat and skill he could get from quests before moving on.
You have acquired Beginner Longsword Crafting Technique. You can now create various items depending on materials and methods.
You have acquired Beginner Steel Armor Crafting Technique. You can now create various items depending on materials and methods.
What you could learn from a blacksmith was item crafting techniques.
Sure, there were probably secret skills known only to master blacksmiths, but Tae-hyun wasn’t greedy enough to aim for those.
If I go after that stuff, he’ll probably tell me to change classes into a blacksmith, won’t he?
Even just learning item recipes was already an excellent skill.
Normally, if you wanted to make something by yourself in Fantasy Online 2, you had to go through a lot of trial and error.
How much steel, how much leather...
You had to fail over and over before finally discovering the recipe for a new item.
That was why blacksmiths joined guilds.
You needed guild support to survive that many failures.
But if you only learned recipes that had already been passed down by a senior blacksmith, then you could skip all that trial and error.
“This is really fun! Please teach me more!”
Tae-hyun spoke to Gurendal with shining enthusiasm, but Gurendal shook his head.
Aw, come on...
It was disappointing, but Tae-hyun stood up anyway.
“Then I guess I’ll go kill some rabbits.”
* * *
Name:Kim Tae-hyun
Level:25
Class:Jobless
HP:340(Vitality)
MP:340(Mana)
Strength:30 (+20)
Agility:30
Stamina:30
Wisdom:30
Luck:1495
Bonus Stats:0
Beginner Swordsmanship5(80%)
Beginner Cooking7(15%)
Beginner Butchery7(35%)
Beginner Blacksmithing3(20%)
Aside from my level, a lot’s gone up.
His Luck was approaching 1500.
His level had only risen by one since last time, but still.
The increases in Cooking, Butchery, and Swordsmanship were a big gain too.
Swordsmanship in particular was the foundation of every sword-related attack, so there was no downside to having it high.
“Start a fire... roast the rabbit foot... nice.”
There wasn’t much meat on it, but maybe because Tae-hyun’s skill had improved, the food was actually pretty edible.
He sat down at ease and tore into the meat.
Around him, rabbits began skirting past him cautiously.
Fantasy Online 2 was an extremely realistic game.
If you kept hunting only one kind of monster in a single area, the area would start reacting.
In Tae-hyun’s case, the people of Tyrum had started saying things like, “What a kind young man, cleaning up those troublesome rabbits around the city.”
And now the rabbits themselves had begun avoiding him.
Is it because of this title?
To be honest, Tae-hyun didn’t think the title Rabbit Slayer would be all that useful.
If he went anywhere else, there wouldn’t be rabbits this strong to begin with.
And it wasn’t like it would help him in conversations with NPCs either.
Compared to something like this—
“I am a dragon slayer. A Dragon Slayer.”
“Ooh, truly incredible! A hero like you has come to our village? Dinner’s free tonight!”
—Rabbit Slayer would go more like this:
“I am the Rabbit Slayer.”
“Then head to the back mountain and catch me a rabbit.”
For titles to get a good reaction, they needed to sound impressive or connect to the NPC somehow.
A title like Rabbit Slayer...
Unless the NPC has a personal grudge against rabbits, nobody’s going to like it.
Still, the fact that it was the first title of its kind on the server and raised all his stats by 20 was nice.
It was an unexpected windfall.
Luck has increased.
When he ate the cooked rabbit foot, his Luck finally hit 1500.
Urging
“Huh?”
A skill with a name that sounded weirdly cheap had popped up.
Tae-hyun checked it again, wondering if he’d somehow misread it.
You can reroll a failed luck-based check.
“...!”
Critical hits, evasion... they were all tied to Luck.
But at the end of the day, they were still probabilities.
Even if something had a 95% chance to happen, if you landed in the 5%, it simply failed.
Wasn’t that exactly how Tae-hyun had lost in Fantasy Online 1?
A critical hit had failed to trigger despite the tiny odds against it.
But with Urging, he could roll again in moments like that.
It was an incredible skill.
Except for the name.
“Why’d they have to call it Urging of all things? It sounds so lame...”
Tae-hyun grumbled.
Not that he had any real complaints. It was an amazing skill.
Still, did it really have to be named that?
* * *
“He hit 1500...”
“He only kills rabbits. Seriously, I’ve never seen anyone do nothing but kill rabbits like that. Did he have a blood feud with rabbits in his previous life or something?”
“Even grind-heavy players get sick of it and move on after that many kills, you know? They start looking for other monsters to level on, or quests to do, but Kim Tae-hyun doesn’t do any of that. He looks insane!”
“Just hang in there. Three more days until the patch. We’ll remove that rabbit foot item then!”
“At this rate he’ll hit 3000 Luck in three days.”
“Probably not. He’s leveling Blacksmithing and Cooking along with it. Besides, it should be happening soon.”
“What should?”
“If you keep hunting the same monster in one area, they temporarily stop respawning, right?”
The AI of Fantasy Online 2, Makina, was annoyingly realistic.
One of the reactions triggered by repeatedly hunting monsters in the same region was extinction.
Not true extinction, of course—they just stopped appearing for a while.
But it was more than enough to put the brakes on Tae-hyun.
“Team Leader. You think he’s really going to class-change into the Avatar of Archisus?”
“...Yeah. He seriously refuses to take any other class. What the hell is he thinking?”
When Tae-hyun had been offered the Arcane Blacksmith class by Gurendal, they’d all thought he would accept.
His blacksmith play in Fantasy Online 1 had been that memorable.
But Tae-hyun had rejected that too.
One quick-witted employee brought it up, but the idea was dismissed immediately.
The conditions for changing into the Avatar of Archisus were actually simple.
Only two things were required.
First: you couldn’t have any class at all.
Second: your Luck had to exceed 2500.
Compared to other Legendary Classes, the conditions were almost laughably simple.
But if you thought about it for even a moment, it became obvious that they were anything but easy.
To begin with, people without any class were rare.
Even players aiming for a rare or Heroic warrior class still took a normal warrior class first.
Clearing quests without any class at all was simply too hard.
The class restrictions in Fantasy Online weren’t that strict.
As long as your class line matched, you could start with a normal class and still become a rare or Heroic Class if you cleared the right quest.
Of course, a normal warrior class couldn’t suddenly become a rare mage class.
For that, you’d have to go back and take a normal mage class from scratch.
Even Lee Se-yeon had first class-changed into a Necromancer, then steadily cleared quests until she finally acquired her Legendary Class.
That was why, once players passed even Level 10, classless people were rare.
But Tae-hyun still had no class.
And it wasn’t because he lacked opportunities, either.
He’d already had two chances to change into a Heroic Class.
Tyrum Ranger. Arcane Blacksmith.
And he had rejected both!
I seriously have no idea what’s going on in his head.
If they ever found out what Tae-hyun was actually thinking, they would all keel over in disbelief.
* * *
“The rabbits... are gone?”
Tae-hyun tilted his head as he wandered around.
He couldn’t figure out what was going on.
“No way... don’t tell me they stopped spawning because I killed too many?”
He said it jokingly, but that was exactly the answer.
“Ah, there you are!”
“Huh?”
“I heard the news. They say you killed every rabbit around Tyrum City? Incredible. Plenty of people said they’d go hunt rabbits, but no one’s ever taken it this far. You were so thorough, you wiped the little bastards out. Wiped them clean!”
“...!”
Only then did Tae-hyun understand the situation.
Fantasy Online 2 was far more realistic than the first game.
Damn it, I should’ve thought about population numbers too!
Who would’ve guessed that killing too many would make them vanish completely?
“The lord heard the news too, and he was very pleased. Come with me.”