Uninvited Guests
Tae-hyun smirked. He didn't dislike people who knew their place. Of course, that didn't mean he was going to show them any mercy. Survival always came with a price!
"You do all that and now you're surrendering?"
"We didn't even hit you once!"
"They were the ones who attacked!"
"But you're friends, aren't you? Shouldn't you take responsibility for what your friends do?"
"We're not friends! We barely just met!"
"We met them here for the first time! We literally just met them today!"
What a heartwarming display of shifting blame! Watching them, Tae-hyun turned to Cain.
"Seeing them reminds me of your friends."
"...?"
"The Red Zone Guild members."
"..." Cain's face crumpled.
Tae-hyun plopped down on a nearby rock. At his casual posture, Kim Byeong-guk and Choi Eun-cheol instinctively lowered themselves even further. He looked exactly like a seasoned thug about to shake someone down! Behind him, the members of his party were still standing with their mouths agape at the sudden turn of events.
"Sure, I can let you live." Tae-hyun held out his hand as he spoke.
"???"
"What is this?"
"What do you mean, 'what is this'? Ever heard of give-and-take? If I'm sparing your lives, you've got to give me something in return!"
"..." The players standing behind Tae-hyun looked utterly bewildered by his incredibly shameless demand. This was definitely not the heroic image of Tae-hyun they had in their minds!
Wait, what? Isn't Kim Tae-hyun supposed to be the kind of guy who lectures bad guys and makes them repent?
I heard the guy next to him, Cain, was like that too...?
To any outside observer, Tae-hyun looked like the villain, while the two kneeling players looked like the innocent victims.
"Uh, if it's gold you want..."
"I have plenty of gold, you punk. Do you have a territory? Huh? Because I actually own a territory."
The two players turned pale.
"W-we have some PVP items..."
"I doubt you guys have anything decent. Besides, those will just drop anyway if I kill you."
Their faces drained of what little color they had left. As they fell silent, Tae-hyun twirled his sword and spoke.
"Nothing? Really? I'll give you ten seconds to think. Ten, nine, two, one..."
"You said ten seconds!"
"People think faster when they're under pressure. And time waits for no man. Still nothing? Then goodbye!"
A cornered mind sometimes operates at peak performance. This was exactly one of those moments! Kim Byeong-guk's eyes went wide as he screamed.
"W-we have something!"
"What is it?"
"A quest! You came here to lift the plague curse, didn't you, Tae-hyun?"
"Yeah. Good guess."
"We have highly classified information regarding that quest!"
"You do?" Tae-hyun's eyes practically screamed, How could a lowlife PKer camping out here have any useful quest info? Kim Byeong-guk answered desperately.
"It really is high-level info! It's about the quest Jekas is currently doing!"
"Jekas? Who's Jekas?" Tae-hyun tilted his head. He was never one to remember the names of players he deemed useless. Even back in Pan-On 1, he had forgotten the names of almost all the rankers he had defeated.
"Jekas is a famous explorer player. A ranker."
"Really?" When it came to clearing quests, no class was more reliable than an Explorer. It was a class that grew by venturing into uncharted territories and solving undiscovered quests!
"I heard he also participated in the Sadik's Flame quest a while back."
"I cleared Sadik's Flame all by myself, though. Is this guy actually reliable?" Tae-hyun suddenly found Jekas highly suspicious. In truth, it was Tae-hyun's fault that Jekas had failed his dungeon run, but Tae-hyun had no way of knowing that. To hear the rest of the story, he turned his attention back to the PKers.
"Fine, Jekas, Bacchus, whatever... How do you know about his quest info anyway?"
"Well, you see, that is..."
"If you hesitate for more than five seconds, I'll assume you're lying. Five, one, time's up!"
"N-no, wait! The thing is, there are so many players coming here for the quest, so we were camping out to find some easy targets...!"
"Ah. I see." Tae-hyun immediately understood what Kim Byeong-guk meant. It was a classic tactic used by player killers. When a popular quest appeared, they would stake out the area beforehand and wait. They would scout for prey—specifically, players they could easily defeat who looked like they would drop good gear. It was obvious these two had been waiting around like that when they spotted Jekas's party.
"So you followed Jekas?"
"Uh, yes? How did you know..."
"And then you realized you couldn't take them, so you backed off, right?"
"???" Kim Byeong-guk looked as if he had seen a ghost. He hadn't even finished explaining, yet Tae-hyun had already pieced it all together.
"Y-yes... We watched them from a distance and then backed away. But seeing how cautiously Jekas's party entered, they must have progressed pretty far in the quest. They even hid the entrance and covered up their tracks when they went in." A player of Jekas's caliber was always careful not to leave traces when clearing a quest. Since they drew so much attention, other players would often try to tail them to interfere or steal the quest rewards. It was pure coincidence that these two had witnessed Jekas's party entering the dungeon.
"That's a shame. To think another party got in first," the party leader, who had been listening from behind, muttered. At his words, Tae-hyun, Lee Da-bi, and Cain all turned their heads in unison.
"???"
"What is he talking about?"
"Why is that a shame?"
The three of them reacted simultaneously! Flustered by their response, the party leader stammered.
"Huh? Well, since another party already entered the dungeon, doesn't that mean we can't go in?"
"You shouldn't let yourself be bound by such rigid stereotypes."
"Pardon?"
"Just because someone else went in first to clear a quest, why does that mean we can't? We can just go in too."
"B-but isn't that bad manners?"
"What do you mean, 'bad manners'? Did they rent out the entire dungeon?"
"But we didn't just happen to run into them; we're openly following them knowing they're inside..."
"If they don't like it, they can openly follow us next time."
The party leader grew even more bewildered by Tae-hyun's incredibly thick-skinned response. Kim Tae-hyun isn't supposed to be this kind of person, is he? He was so flustered that he completely forgot to ask why Tae-hyun had tried to join his party in the first place.
"That's Kim Tae-hyun, right? It really is him!"
"The rumors of him being here were true!"
News of Tae-hyun's battle spread like wildfire. The players who had been logged out by force had leaked the information. As a result, other players who had gathered nearby to clear the quest rushed over to catch a glimpse. Since clearing the quest was too difficult anyway, they figured they might as well watch a famous player! That was the mindset of the crowd gathering at the scene.
"Wait, isn't that the guy who asked to join our party earlier? That's Kim Tae-hyun?"
"Apparently, Kim Tae-hyun has a skill that lets him change his appearance. Just look at his gear and the pet he's traveling with. It's definitely him."
"No way! How can someone under level 100 be Kim Tae-hyun? Is this a joke?"
Among the gathered crowd were the very players from the party Tae-hyun had tried to join earlier. If Tae-hyun had revealed his identity from the start, they would have accepted him without a single second of hesitation! Seeing things unfold like this left them utterly dumbfounded.
"Is he an impostor?"
"Yeah, he could be a fake."
"How could an impostor slice through PKers all by himself? He's the real deal. You guys were just tested by Kim Tae-hyun."
"A... test?"
"Do you really think Kim Tae-hyun would just join any random party? Even if he did, he'd carefully evaluate them first. He probably decided that a party acting all picky and hiding their levels wasn't worthy of playing with him. I mean, he's Kim Tae-hyun."
"To think... he had such deep intentions..."
"..." Tae-hyun flinched as the players' loud voices drifted over to him. He had literally just backed off quietly because of the level restriction...
Lee Da-bi whispered from beside him, "Was that really the reason?"
"Hey, shut up."
After shaking off the crowd, Tae-hyun's group arrived at the dungeon entrance under the guidance of Kim Byeong-guk and Choi Eun-cheol. Of course, unlike other dungeons, the entrance wasn't visible. At a glance, it looked like nothing more than a barren wasteland and a sheer cliff!
They hid the entrance before going in. It was standard practice for experienced players. Tae-hyun would have done the same. It was always a waste to let someone else wander into a dungeon you found on your own for free.
-Divine Foresight. Whoosh-
The skill projected a straight path leading directly toward the cliff.
Huh? A path leading straight into a solid cliff wall. There was only one explanation.
Tae-hyun pulled out the Ancient Hammer for the first time in a while. Seeing this, Cain tilted his head.
"What are you doing?"
It was bound to look strange, pulling out a hammer when there was absolutely nothing in front of him. But then...
RUMBLE! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
"..." The party members stood frozen, their jaws dropping. Kim Byeong-guk and Choi Eun-cheol were no different. The sheer power to shatter a thick cliff face with a single blow!
Just how high is his Strength stat?!
What kind of class deals that much damage?!
Players who didn't know the secret of the Ancient Hammer were bound to be utterly confused.
"Ah, there's a path here." As the base of the cliff crumbled away, the hidden entrance to the dungeon was revealed.
"Can we leave now?"
Instead of answering, Tae-hyun reached out his hand. Seeing this, Kim Byeong-guk cautiously tried to shake it. *Slap.*
"Uh... weren't you offering a handshake?"
"No, hand over the PVP gear and gold you mentioned earlier."
"..."
You have entered the Forgotten Mechanical Golem's Labyrinth.
Logging out is temporarily restricted. If you log out, you will be forcibly expelled from the dungeon and a penalty will be applied.
"They definitely went through here." Items were scattered across the steel corridor. It seemed the party that went ahead hadn't even bothered to pick them up. They had defeated the dungeon's monsters but didn't feel the need to loot the trash drops! This was a common sight among high-level players.
"Oh my... leaving things like this behind! What terrible people!" Lee Da-bi, in a rare display of anger, reached down to gather the trash loot. However, Tae-hyun grabbed her arm.
"...?"
"Hold on. Let me see the items."
"T-Tae-hyun, you make so much gold, yet you're even after trash loot..."
"...No, I'm not. Well, I do collect a lot of miscellaneous items, though." Since he often had to gather crafting materials on his own, his inventory was usually packed to the brim with materials other players ignored. But that wasn't why he wanted to look at them now.
◈ One of the parts that made up a mechanical golem. It was exquisitely crafted, but is currently broken.
As expected. I'm in the right place. Tae-hyun intuitively knew he had found the correct dungeon. The mechanical golems Gabriel had mentioned—dungeons featuring such monsters couldn't possibly be common.
To get the reward from Saruon, I just need to uncover the true nature of the plague curse. But trying to negotiate a split with the guys who went ahead of us probably won't work, will it? Tae-hyun shrugged. Words obviously wouldn't cut it; what he needed now was a demonstration of force.
"We should catch up immediately... but I should try this first."
"...?" As Tae-hyun took a stance and pulled out his hammer again, Cain stared at him with a look that said, What kind of crazy stunt is this bastard pulling now?
"What are you doing?"
"Reassembling the mechanical golem."