“Ah. Right.”
Gu Sung-wook silently held out his hand.
On his face was the look of a warrior who had survived countless trials and hardships.
“You fought well.”
“The recipe!”
“Dual-wield skills are hard to use. What kind of build did you go for? Did you gear mostly for Agility?”
“The recipe!!”
“Come to think of it, you must’ve gotten a decent chunk of EXP from the quest reward.”
“The recipe!!!!”
“Fine. I’ll give it to you.”
Tae-hyun handed the recipe over to Gu Sung-wook.
The moment he received it, Gu Sung-wook dropped to his knees and began sobbing.
“What’s with that guy?”
“No clue. Must be some kind of weirdo.”
Gu Sung-wook kneeling in front of Kim Tae-hyun, tearing up.
To everyone else, it could only look strange.
“Why’s he doing that in front of Kim Tae-hyun?”
“No way… did he confess and get rejected?”
“……!”
Whether people said things like that or not, Tae-hyun had already stopped paying attention to Gu Sung-wook.
He had too much to do right now.
Gu Sung-wook no longer mattered.
“Evangeline, you wanted to know about the curse this guy got, right?”
“Yeah!”
Evangeline answered instantly.
A curse that reduced Luck to zero.
How incredible was that?
Kane stared at Evangeline like she was out of her mind.
Why in the world was she so excited about turning her Luck to zero?
“The curse this guy got was one cast by the Sadiq Church. They’ve got one that drops your Luck to zero.”
“……!”
“If you want to get cursed, wouldn’t it be best to go pick a fight with them?”
Light flashed in the eyes visible through Evangeline’s helmet slit.
Tae-hyun was absolutely right.
She couldn’t let this chance slip by.
Frankly speaking, if her Luck could just be brought up to zero, she could escape this damned situation.
Because honestly, as long as her Luck was only zero, party play and everything else wouldn’t be a problem.
“I need to go right now!”
“Excellent idea. Burn the Sadiq Church to the ground!”
Tae-hyun egged her on.
There was no reconciling with the Sadiq Church anyway, so the only thing left was to make as many enemies for them as possible.
If a ranker on Evangeline’s level became hostile to the Sadiq Church, that was all to the good.
Watching from the side, Rufo looked at Tae-hyun as if he were staring at a demon.
He was exploiting even fellow adventurers!
Completely unaware of Tae-hyun’s real intentions, Evangeline felt grateful to him.
“A lot happened, but still, it was fun. Fighting together was fun too. If we run into each other again, let’s fight together again.”
Evangeline really was broad-minded and good-natured.
After everything she’d gone through, she was still saying that.
In truth, there had been… well, not exactly fondness. More like a lot of bad blood and a tiny bit of reluctant familiarity.
Still, it had been fun doing party play together again after such a long time.
But Kim Tae-hyun was, as always, the sort of man who shattered expectations.
He answered as if he didn’t particularly need that.
“What? I don’t think that’ll be necessary anymore.”
Tae-hyun’s Luck had already broken into the 3,000s.
Even if he kept Evangeline close by, there was a good chance her bad-luck aura wouldn’t function as a proper penalty anymore.
Of course, when Evangeline heard that, it sounded like something else entirely.
“…….”
The other players nearby were amazed as they watched Evangeline struggle to contain her anger.
That kind of anger management… incredible!
“You… one day, when you run into me again, you’re definitely going to regret this. Just wait till then! Seriously, just wait! No, really, really wait for it!”
Shouting that, Evangeline stormed off.
Kane watched her retreating back with envy.
Ah… when will I ever be able to leave that freely?
The ruined walls of Anong Castle began to be repaired at once.
Of course, it would still take months before they were fully restored, but for the time being, there was no enemy nearby capable of attacking Anong Castle.
The ones celebrating were the players.
The players who had rushed over just because they saw Tae-hyun had been all smiles at the quest rewards.
Even players who had barely done anything after joining the quest had gained nearly four to five levels from it.
The rewards had been that good.
And on top of that, Count Anong had showered the players who participated in the quest with gold.
“Hey. What did I tell you? I told you any quest Kim Tae-hyun’s doing is worth joining!”
“This is insane. You know how many levels I gained this time? I just shot arrows from inside the walls and went up six levels.”
The voices drifting through the air made Tae-hyun uncomfortable.
Not that he had taken any losses from this quest, of course, but…
Somehow, it still felt unfair.
And Tae-hyun wasn’t the only one feeling cheated.
There were plenty of other players feeling the same way—players who had never imagined the Marquis Marden quest would end that quickly at Anong Castle.
Videos related to the Marquis Marden quest were flooded with comments.
Most of them were from players who had thought, This quest looks like it’ll take a while, so I’ll join later once it looks close to being cleared, or It’ll be safer to join once one of the big guilds starts the subjugation, and had decided to wait.
They were the same people who had sneered when others headed to Anong Castle.
They had all spoken with such confidence, and yet Tae-hyun had gone and cleared the quest in one shot right in front of everyone.
Marquis Marden hadn’t gone anywhere else—he had died at Anong Castle.
No wonder they felt robbed.
And when people felt cheated, they always got ugly.
They kept whining in the comments.
Of course, they weren’t the only people on the internet.
The people who had actually joined the quest were just thrilled.
The truth was that Marquis Marden had practically self-destructed on his own, but that wasn’t how it looked to everyone else.
Watching the footage from the Siege of Anong Castle, it seemed as if Tae-hyun had effortlessly taken Marquis Marden’s attacks head-on.
Just as the effect suggested, skills that reflected attacks were notoriously hard to use.
Any player who had dabbled in swordsmanship had looked into them at least once, but very few had gotten satisfying results from them.
The videos circulating right now had all been recorded and uploaded by other players who participated in the quest.
That meant no one had gotten a clear, detailed look at how Tae-hyun actually fought.
Players who cared less about excitement and more about information were especially curious about exactly how Tae-hyun had battled.
His class and his skills were just that mysterious.
Because of what Tae-hyun had said on the broadcast, a new Engineering craze had started spreading.
Just as Tae-hyun had sparked a Blacksmithing craze back in Fantasy Online 1, now it was Engineering’s turn.
The sheer force that had brought down that massive wall in an instant!
Of course, it had required all sorts of preparation beforehand, but people never really saw that part.
All they saw was that it looked awesome.
Seeing that reaction, Kim Tae-san’s fist trembled once again.
“You little punk…!”
“Tae-hyun, sorry, but…”
“……?”
“A quest came up for us.”
The blacksmiths pointed at one another as they spoke.
Kim Ji-sahn, Park Seong-chan, and Woo Jeong-sik—these three had originally operated out of Genoma City.
Most of their quests came from there, and all the NPCs they had built relationships with were based there too, so naturally the quest had appeared in Genoma City.
It had come through the blacksmith association they’d joined, so if they skipped it, the penalty would be severe.
“Really? Then go.”
Tae-hyun told them to leave without even one second of hesitation.
“Sob… we should help you more first… huh?”
“I said go. You’ve got a quest to clear, don’t you?”
“Wait, you’re… not upset?”
“Why would I be upset?”
“If we’re not around, who’s going to do the odd jobs and carry your luggage?!”
At Kim Ji-sahn’s words, Park Seong-chan covered his face in embarrassment.
Then he jabbed his friend in the side and said,
“Hey. Think about how something sounds before you say it.”
Being able to say something like that so proudly was a talent in itself.
“I’ll just grab somebody else. NPC porters would probably be low-level, but I can hire them with money… Ah. Kane’s here too.”
“Why me?!”
“Then do you want me to carry it? I can’t afford to lose movement speed.”
Tae-hyun’s fighting style relied on rapid movement, darting in and out.
He couldn’t be lugging around too much baggage.
“Sob, to think we have to part like this…”
“I said hurry up and go.”
Kicking the sniffling blacksmiths away with his foot, Tae-hyun shooed them off.
“You can’t take in any other blacksmiths while we’re gone!”
“Don’t wanna.”
“Th-then… up to three?”
“Don’t wanna.”
“Five?”
“I said no. You gonna leave quietly, or do you want to get hit a few times first?”
Tae-hyun’s attitude was so cold it looked like you couldn’t draw a single drop of blood from him with a needle.
In the end, the blacksmiths had no choice but to leave in tears.
“What if other people latch onto him while we’re gone?”
“There won’t be anyone like that! There better not be!”
Once the blacksmiths left, Tae-hyun turned to Ed-an.
“You can stand up now.”
Until that moment, Ed-an had been kneeling with both hands raised.
Hanging around his neck was a sign that read:
I Will Bring Proper Information Next Time
Of course, this quest fiasco hadn’t actually been Ed-an’s fault, but logic like that never worked in front of Tae-hyun.
“Tae-hyun, this wasn’t my fault!”
“Quiet. We’re heading to the Espa Kingdom now.”
“The Espa Kingdom? Which part?”
“Abalab City.”
“If it’s Abalab City…”
Hearing that, Kane frowned.
He’d heard of it before.
“You’re not going there for that, are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You mean to join the Abalab City arena, don’t you? If not that, I can’t think of any reason a bastard like you would go there.”
The arena.
One of the indispensable features of Fantasy Online.
In a game that imposed penalties for PK almost everywhere, it was the one place where PK was legal.
And if you survived to the end and won, you could earn rewards obtainable only in the arena.