Chapter 64
Chapter 64
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 64
Chapter Title: Blade King Kyung Wi-gang
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‘They brought quite the haul.’
Kang Hyun-soo grinned widely as he looked at the items the Sword Ghost had delivered.
‘Devour them all.’
He infused mana into the Sword of Gluttony.
Saaaaah!
The Sword of Gluttony greedily consumed the A-Rank items and S-Rank items.
‘How much will it take to evolve it to SS-Rank?’
B-Rank or A-Rank stuff probably wouldn’t even register.
‘S-Rank items aren’t even available for purchase.’
A-Rank items were somewhat available at shops.
But starting from S-Rank.
High-level players used them as lifelong weapons, so they never hit the market.
‘Even if you upgrade to SS-Rank, guilds typically handle trades internally.’
S-Rank items were practically strategic weapons.
That was why kingdom armies and massive guilds only traded them internally and never sold them outside.
‘Well, no helping it.’
If no one was selling.
‘Then I’ll just have to take them by force.’
And fortunately.
The elites of the massive guilds, Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild, were all gathered in one place right now.
Which meant.
‘The Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild guild houses are completely empty.’
Kang Hyun-soo summoned his summons and dispatched them to the Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild.
He planned to thoroughly rob them blind.
* * *
‘They vanished again.’
Flame Knight Jamie scowled at the enemy’s sudden disappearance.
He couldn’t get a read on where they’d gone.
‘No need to worry about it right now.’
The Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong and the Zhonghua Guild elites were right in front of him.
Once he subdued the Zhonghua Guild bastards up ahead, he could just ask them what trick they’d used.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kw!
Crimson aura blades erupted from Flame Knight Jamie’s sword in thick streams.
“Kill them all!”
No more words needed between Cabal Guild and Zhonghua Guild.
“Yes, Guild Master!”
At Flame Knight Jamie’s command, Cabal Guild’s elites charged toward the Zhonghua Guild elites.
“Let’s show these arrogant pirates the might of Zhonghua!”
“Waaaaah!”
At Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong’s shout, the Zhonghua Guild elites likewise rushed toward the Cabal Guild elites.
Kwaaaaaang!
The elites of the two massive guilds clashed head-on.
Leading them were Flame Knight Jamie and Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong.
Kwaaaang! Kwaaaang!
Massive explosions rang out, aura fragments bursting forth as flames and lightning surged, blanketing the battlefield.
Players who had transcended human limits unleashed attack skills at each other.
They moved at speeds invisible to the ordinary eye, swinging their blades to sever each other’s lifelines.
In the rear, healers relentlessly cast heal skills and buff skills to support their allies.
Cabal Guild seized the momentum in the fierce battle.
The exploits of Flame Knight Jamie and his three companions.
Those four mercilessly slaughtered any enemies who blocked their path.
They were so strong that even the bold Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong couldn’t last ten seconds before turning tail.
‘Just how much power were they hiding?’
Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong was considerably rattled.
He hadn’t expected three more powerhouses on Flame Knight Jamie’s level to appear.
“Hold the line! Hold no matter what!”
Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong bellowed until his throat was raw.
If it turned into a prolonged battle, they would win for sure.
They just had to endure.
But.
‘Can we even endure?’
Seeing the might of Flame Knight Jamie and those three, worry began to creep in.
Meanwhile, Flame Knight Jamie, who had been rampaging across the battlefield alongside the three who had completed their forced descension ritual, noticed something off.
‘Why aren’t Blade King Kyung Wi-gang and the rankers here?’
He had pushed them to undergo the forced descension ritual to deal with Blade King Kyung Wi-gang and the rankers who had left on the great expedition.
The problem was that the rushed demonization would cause their bodies’ balance to collapse completely in about half a month.
Once that balance shattered, the three demonized ones would lose their lives.
So they had to behead Blade King Kyung Wi-gang and the rankers within half a month and annihilate Zhonghua Guild.
Yet nowhere on the battlefield could he spot Blade King Kyung Wi-gang or the rankers from the great expedition.
‘Damn it!’
This was bad.
If they couldn’t find and eliminate Blade King Kyung Wi-gang and the rankers within half a month?
Cabal Guild would suffer massive losses for nothing.
Worst case, Cabal Guild could face annihilation in half a month.
‘I need to wipe these bastards out at least.’
Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong and the Zhonghua Guild elites.
He had to eliminate them as quickly as possible.
And figure out where Blade King Kyung Wi-gang and the rankers were.
That was when.
A minor anomaly occurred.
‘What’s this?’
Something was steadily draining Flame Knight Jamie’s mana and stamina.
‘My mana and stamina are leaking away.’
Flame Knight Jamie quickly checked the status of Cabal Guild players.
‘What the hell?’
The movements of the relatively low-level 600-range players had noticeably slowed.
The battle hadn’t even lasted ten minutes.
And they were already exhausted?
In contrast, the Zhonghua Guild players’ conditions were pristine.
‘These sons of bitches!’
They had definitely set something up in this battlefield area.
‘Gotta end this fast.’
He needed to wrap up the battle as quickly as possible.
That would minimize the damage.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kw!
Crimson aura enveloped Flame Knight Jamie’s entire body.
Then he began rampaging like a furious lion.
‘Damn it, it’s definitely active.’
Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong wasn’t an idiot.
That was why he had made full preparations for victory.
One of them was the Bloodsuck Field.
The Bloodsuck Field was an SSS-Rank skill embedded in the Vampire King’s Ring, a reward Zhonghua Guild obtained after clearing the SSS-Rank dungeon, Vampire King’s Dungeon, at tremendous cost.
When the Bloodsuck Field was deployed, it drained stamina and mana from all living beings except the caster’s designated allies.
And that stolen mana and stamina boosted the caster’s stats.
An overpowered effect worthy of its SSS-Rank name.
But the Vampire King’s Ring had one fatal flaw.
That was why Zhonghua Guild’s Guild Master, Blade King Kyung Wi-gang, had banned its use.
That fatal flaw was.
‘The Bloodsuck Field requires living sacrifices to activate.’
Moreover, the range of the Bloodsuck Field depended on the number and stats of the sacrificed living beings.
To deploy the Bloodsuck Field, Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong had offered up the blood and flesh of hundreds of captured Cabal Guild players as sacrifices.
If word got out?
They might be mistaken for demon contractors and branded traitors to humanity.
Even if cleared up, they couldn’t escape the condemnation for using fellow humans as living sacrifices.
For Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong, it was a considerable risk.
Yet.
‘I can’t even stand against him.’
Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong had absorbed the stamina and mana of countless enemies in the Bloodsuck Field, growing stronger, and planned to boldly duel Flame Knight Jamie to victory.
But then three more on Flame Knight Jamie’s level appeared, forcing him to slink away in disgrace.
‘Endure. If we endure, we win.’
Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong gritted his teeth.
He had committed inhuman atrocities that no human should for victory.
Shouldn’t he at least claim the win?
* * *
‘That crazy bastard.’
Kang Hyun-soo gaped at what Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong had done.
He had seen them bring in bound prisoners before the battle and wondered what they were up to.
‘Never thought they had the Vampire King’s Ring.’
In fact, no one knew the Vampire King’s Ring better than Kang Hyun-soo.
He was the one who had witnessed the bloodshed it caused firsthand before his regression.
‘That’s no ordinary item.’
It was a ring containing the soul of the SSS-Rank dungeon boss, the Vampire King.
If you kept using the Vampire King’s Ring?
‘You’d end up devoured by the Vampire King’s soul.’
The player who used it before the regression.
Ultimately got eaten by the Vampire King.
‘No wonder Sword Sovereign Ju Wi-cheon jumped into slaying the resurrected Vampire King so aggressively.’
Before the regression, the one who slew the resurrected Vampire King was Zhonghua Guild’s Guild Master, Sword Sovereign Ju Wi-cheon.
Kang Hyun-soo had thought it was just for honor.
But it was because they were desperate to keep their crime from being exposed.
‘I need to recover it.’
It was too dangerous to leave alone.
Especially if it fell into Cabal Guild’s hands?
‘It could spark an even greater bloodbath than before the regression.’
But first, there was something else to do.
Kang Hyun-soo switched the targets of his Commander’s Gaze skill to the summons attacking the Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild guild houses.
‘Move out.’
At Kang Hyun-soo’s command, the Sword Ghost and Cabal Units 1 through 4 led the summons in raiding Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild.
‘They’re defenseless.’
Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild.
Both had deployed all their top elites.
The players left at the guild houses were at best 300 to 400 level.
Naturally, they couldn’t stop Kang Hyun-soo’s summons led by the Sword Ghost and Cabal Units 1 through 4.
‘Sweep it all up.’
Following Kang Hyun-soo’s orders, the summons looted Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild’s warehouses.
Gold, items, skill books—everything, without discrimination.
With the guild houses under attack and warehouses being ransacked.
It was chaos, as expected for such an incident.
Word naturally reached the Zhonghua Guild and Cabal Guild in the midst of battle.
But.
Locked in fierce combat, they had no spare elites to pull out.
Cabal Guild was going all-out to end the battle quickly.
Zhonghua Guild couldn’t afford to lose even a shred of force if they wanted to hold out.
Meanwhile, Cabal Guild’s Guild Master, Flame Knight Jamie, was baffled by Zhonghua Guild’s decision to raid their empty guild house with a detachment when he was already short on manpower.
‘No way Blade King Kyung Wi-gang and the rankers are the ones house-robbing?’
He even misunderstood.
‘They must figure that with this stamina-and-mana-draining trap, they can beat Cabal Guild even with this force.’
Flame Knight Jamie ground his teeth.
How much did they underestimate Cabal Guild to choose that?
‘I’ll shatter that arrogance.’
While Flame Knight Jamie labored under this false assumption.
Zhonghua Guild’s Vice Guild Master, Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong, was shocked by Cabal Guild’s depth—having enough to send rankers with a detachment despite bringing this many troops.
But the conclusion was the same.
‘If I lead this battle to victory, I can take it all back.’
Flame Knight Jamie reached a similar conclusion.
‘Once I wipe these out and return, I’ll deal with Blade King Kyung Wi-gang and the rankers too.’
They had to win this fight.
Only then could they recover all their losses.
* * *
‘Cabal Guild’s winning.’
Kang Hyun-soo coldly assessed as he monitored the battle.
There was a reason Cabal Guild hadn’t retreated despite falling into the Bloodsuck Field trap.
Namely.
‘They were confident of victory.’
The three sudden powerhouses on Flame Knight Jamie’s level.
That was why Cabal Guild couldn’t lose even in the trap.
‘Still puzzling, though. Retreating would’ve been more profitable.’
Damage to rankers like Flame Knight Jamie and high-level players wasn’t huge.
But the 500 to 600-range players had taken heavy losses.
‘They’re definitely winning, but no need to take such big damage, right?’
This was due to the forced descension’s side effect—a half-month time limit on the three powerhouses like Flame Knight Jamie.
But Kang Hyun-soo had no way of knowing that.
Before the regression, the Cabal Guild players Kang Hyun-soo faced had completed stable demonization.
So no time limit.
Thus, for Kang Hyun-soo.
He had no way to know the difference.
‘It’s over.’
Two rankers and one named player dead.
Demon Extinguishing Spear Jin Gu-pyeong was barely hanging on.
But he wouldn’t last much longer.
‘Time to withdraw the summons sent to Cabal Guild.’
Just as Kang Hyun-soo was about to order the withdrawal.
Kwaaaaaaaaang!
A massive explosion unleashed dingy gray clouds spewing thunder and lightning, destroying everything around.
And those dingy gray clouds were hurtling toward the battlefield where Cabal Guild and Zhonghua Guild were locked in combat.
Kang Hyun-soo’s eyes flashed as he witnessed it through his summons’ vision.
Dingy gray clouds.
It was the signature of one player.
‘Faster than expected.’
The owner of those dingy gray clouds was Zhonghua Guild’s Guild Master.
Blade King Kyung Wi-gang.