Lucas Under Suspicion
As suspicion kept growing, even Lucas couldn’t just ignore it anymore. In the end, he turned on his stream and opened his inventory window.
He hadn’t wanted to show the item options. The exact effects of a +7 enhancement were incredibly valuable information.
But if he hid them for no reason, he figured people would just start cursing him out again, calling it edited or fake.
So in the end, he revealed everything.
Watching the broadcast, Tae-hyun suddenly started to feel a little guilty.
No, I mean... I didn’t know this was what was happening...
He quietly wrote something in the chat under an anonymous name.
As far as Tae-hyun was concerned, that was the kindest thing he could possibly do.
But the response was cold.
The bombardment came down all at once.
Clicking his tongue, Tae-hyun backed off.
Sorry, Lucas. I was only trying to help you...
Feeling guilty toward a ranker he’d never even met.
Tae-hyun pushed the feeling aside and logged back into the game.
Not long after he logged in, Ji-su entered the game, and then Choi Sang-yun logged in after her.
While waiting for them, Tae-hyun idly fiddled with the items in his inventory.
What was the point of resting? Even in his spare time, he had to steadily raise his skill levels.
He’d obtained a Legendary Class, but he hadn’t grown lazy in the slightest. That was Tae-hyun for you—diligent to the bone.
If getting stronger required doing all kinds of absurd things, he’d do them without hesitation.
My Blacksmithing skill is at Intermediate Level 6, and Cooking’s still only Beginner Level 9. I should really cook more. Same with Tailoring. And for later, I should level Mining too...
If someone overheard him, they’d probably ask whether he was planning to open a department store by himself with that ridiculous list of skills.
But Tae-hyun’s stubbornness didn’t waver.
A versatile all-rounder with a wide range of skills—that was the kind of character who had the potential to win in any situation.
“You here?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m here too!”
“Right. Right.”
Tae-hyun gave them a cursory greeting and equipped an item.
Durability: 150/150, Defense 20
On equip: +25 Constitution, +25 Stamina
Usable Skill: Tenacious Endurance
Passive Skill: Indomitable
Requirements: Strength 50, Constitution 50
A belt once worn by the champion of a city boxing tournament. After it became known that he’d worn this enchanted belt to win, it was confiscated from him.
An item he’d squeezed out of those two idiots who had requested PK.
The Belt of Grit was a very good item. The Belt for Beginner Blacksmith Tae-hyun had been wearing was also good, but the Belt of Grit was a step above it.
To think they’d been wearing something like this.
They fought like trash, but their gear was actually pretty decent, huh?
If the two of them heard that, they’d probably clutch the backs of their necks with their blood pressure spiking.
The Belt of Grit was good, but there was something even better.
Durability: 55/55, Magic Defense 35
Attribute Defense 35
Usable Skills: Mana Charge, Mana Absorption
Mana recovery speed +25%
Restores 5% of consumed mana whenever magic is used.
The trump card created through exhaustive research by a Magic Tower mage who was always troubled by lack of mana. On the very day he finished it, a thief broke in and stole the earring—but the mage had spent all his mana making it and couldn’t stop the thief.
Ignoring the sad backstory, just looking at the options, it was an excellent item.
Mana recovery options were always among the best item options in the game. If an item had them, it was good. No question.
Of the two PK players, Choi Eun-cheol had been the mage. This earring was probably something he truly treasured.
For a mage, an item like this was incredibly valuable and hard to obtain.
Of course, Choi Eun-cheol had stolen it through PK too, but Tae-hyun didn’t know that.
In any case, now it belonged to Tae-hyun.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t equip the Burning Steel Heavy Armor or the Burning Steel Axe because of class and level restrictions.
I’ll just sell them later.
“Huh? What are you doing here?”
Tae-hyun had been about to move with the other two when he spotted some familiar faces returning to the fortress.
It was Choi Ha-jun and Choi Ha-yeong’s party. The party member who had died to the PK duo before seemed to have been revived too, because they were together again.
“Ah, hello. And this person next to you is...?”
“My friend.”
“Hello. I’m Sa-yu.”
He was committed to the bit!
Choi Sang-yun smoothly played dumb and even altered his voice.
The men who saw him immediately got that dazed look in their eyes.
Choi Ha-jun felt his heart start pounding.
“More importantly, I thought you’d be outside clearing quests. Hasn’t it been over seventy-two hours already?”
“Ah. Yes. We were going to, but...”
Choi Ha-yeong nodded and explained.
Starting with the Orc Head quest, they had kept clearing quests to build favor with the people in the fortress.
People who had gone to other fortresses came back with rumors that the Red Zone guild was collecting taxes and even charging entry fees.
Thinking about that, they felt lucky to have gotten into this fortress at all.
Compared to such suffocating taxes, Tae-hyun’s demands had been angelic.
But things hadn’t gone smoothly.
More and more Red Zone guild members had started roaming the area.
“We were out hunting Orcs in the field, and they told us to get lost...”
“Isn’t this place pretty far from Ogden Fortress, the one they occupied?”
Aden Fortress was far from Ogden Fortress. Their activity areas shouldn’t have overlapped.
“Maybe they finished cleaning out the area around their own fortress and came here? To collect more taxes.”
Tae-hyun’s guess was right.
Once the Red Zone guild had roughly cleared out the Orcs around their fortress, they started seeing players leaving for other places to do quests.
Even if they couldn’t rest inside the fortress, even if they couldn’t use the facilities there—I’m still not paying taxes!
That was how much people hated paying taxes.
Of course, that didn’t mean Red Zone had any intention of lowering them.
So the Red Zone guild members had started walking around, throwing their weight around.
They weren’t protecting the inside of the fortress—they were basically thugs roaming the field and shaking people down.
“That’s way too much. They’ve got some nerve.”
Choi Sang-yun spoke quietly.
Choi Ha-jun and Choi Ha-yeong’s party members also looked deeply aggrieved.
“Even if they pile up Infamy like that, there’s no long-term upside... Their Guild Master must be trying to cash out big all at once.”
That kind of rampage couldn’t last long.
If their Infamy piled high enough, NPCs and soldiers from other kingdoms might attack them.
And even before it got to that point, accumulated player resentment was dangerous.
The players wandering around here had no power, so they kept quiet—but what about others?
These players could call in high-level acquaintances. Or high-level players hungry for fame might attack the Red Zone guild and use them as stepping stones to build their own Reputation.
Causing trouble like that was the kind of thing only truly powerful guilds did after preparing themselves for the consequences.
But Red Zone was just a fairly strong, ordinary guild.
To act this way meant they were blind to present profit and throwing away their future.
“If we run into them, this could get annoying.”
“You planning to pay the tax?”
“Are you crazy? If they want to come at us, let them. Who do those pathetic bastards think they are...?”
Tae-hyun replied as if the idea were ridiculous.
This wasn’t the first time he’d seen idiots act like that, and it wouldn’t be the last.
He’d had a similar experience back in Fantasy Online 1.
To gather rare ore, he’d gone into a mine and spent three whole months doing nothing but mining.
Even for Tae-hyun, spending all that time digging ore had worn him down to the bone.
Then the guild that occupied the mine made their grand announcement.
This mine is under our guild’s control!
Anyone who wants to use it from now on will pay tax and an entry fee!
Deep in the mine, Tae-hyun had come outside, heard that, and completely snapped.
At last—a chance to vent all the stress that had been piling up.
He split guild members apart, buried them, beat them down, shoved them off cliffs...
Even after the guild fled the mine in terror, he chased them down.
In the end, that guild completely disbanded.
“What level is the Red Zone Guild Master?”
“Uh... Around my level, I think. Maybe lower.”
“So he’s high-level enough. And this is what he does with that level? Mugging kids for pocket change? Wow...”
“But in your current state, wouldn’t it be hard to deal with them right now?”
“That’s true. But fights aren’t always one-on-one...”
Seeing Tae-hyun grin, Choi Sang-yun felt reassured.
Whenever Tae-hyun smiled like that, it meant he was cooking up something evil.
Especially for his enemies.
“So if we head outside now, we can run into Red Zone?”
“If we wander around, we’ll probably bump into them once or twice.”
“You think if we ask them to fetch us an Orc Chieftain’s head instead, they’ll do it?”
“Yeah, right. They’ll tell us to pay taxes.”
“So they’re completely useless. Let’s go.”
With that, Tae-hyun motioned with his hand.
Ji-su and Choi Sang-yun followed him outside.
“W-wait! Are you really planning to fight the Red Zone guild?”
“If I have to.”
“W-we could help too...”
When Choi Ha-yeong said that, her party members visibly flinched.
Fight the Red Zone guild?
They might not be the strongest guild on the server, but they were at least powerful enough to occupy an entire fortress.
If they got marked by them for no reason, it would be a headache. Going up against a guild alone was no joke.
Seeing the party members hesitate, Tae-hyun let out a short laugh.
“Forget it. No need to help. Just handle your own business.”
At some point, his speech had shifted from polite to casual.
But none of them could complain.
They were too embarrassed that he’d seen straight through them.
“N-no, wait! Ha-jun, we should help!”
But Choi Ha-jun shook his head.
“Noona. I don’t think fighting Red Zone right now is a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you think the Red Zone guild keeps trying to expand their territory? Because people are avoiding their fortress and going elsewhere to hunt and do quests. If we fight them now, we’ll be made an example of.”
“So you’re scared of that? That’s why you won’t help?!”
“...We have to be realistic. There’s no reason to clash with them right now.”
The other party members felt the same way.
“You sure you don’t want to bring them along? I could probably drag them over.”
“How?”
“Judging by the way those party members were looking at me, if I just asked, they’d probably do anything.”
“...”
“...”
Ji-su and Tae-hyun both looked at him like he was pathetic.
Choi Sang-yun shouted in protest.
“Hey, why?! I didn’t do anything wrong! If they got the wrong idea, that’s on them!”
“Forget it. Even if we brought them, they’d be no help. If they don’t intend to fight, they’ll just get in the way.”
“So how are you planning to fight?”
“First, let’s find them. If it looks like we can clear the quest without clashing with them, we can just do the quest and leave...”
But before Tae-hyun could even finish speaking, an explosion flashed in the distance.
“What’s that?”
“Looks like there’s a mage over there. And those are... Orc tribes. Seems like Red Zone is attacking them.”
“...”
Any Orc tribe that might attack them later had to be dealt with first.
If it looked like they could avoid a clash, Tae-hyun had been planning to put Choi Sang-yun in front, kill only the Orc Chieftain, and somehow wrap up the quest with that.
But after seeing this, that was no longer possible.
How should I do this...?
He didn’t mind fighting. The problem was their numbers.
Red Zone had levels, sure—but more importantly, they were a guild. Their composition would be solid.
Warriors, priests, mages...
He couldn’t just charge into a setup like that relying only on Choi Sang-yun.
And it wasn’t as if the guild lacked high-level players.
“Should we call people?”
“What people?”
“My fans.”
“...No. Let’s save that as a last resort.”