Chapter 3: Huh?
Huh?
The reward went up? Just because he hadn't chosen a weapon? That was something he hadn't known. Refusing a weapon on Hell difficulty was madness to begin with. He had only passed on one now because he already had the Super Novice Set—and even so.
Works for me.
Who would complain when the rewards were being shoveled out for free? At the unexpected windfall, Yujun grinned.
The tutorial is beginning.
Enter the forest.
Delay may result in a penalty.
It was finally starting. The Hell-difficulty tutorial. He ought to have been shaking, and yet he was strangely calm.
Is it the Equanimity trait?
Perhaps, of everything he had right now, this trait would help him most.
All right. I'll treat this like a game. And I've already been through Hell difficulty once.
Yujun didn't hesitate. He broke into a run. The full armor rattled with every step—clank, clank—yet it didn't hinder him or feel uncomfortable in the slightest. If anything, it sat on him as easily as everyday clothes.
On Hell difficulty, the wise move was to clear this stretch without delay, unless you wanted to face an endless tide of starving wolves.
They're already on me.
Howls rose from every direction. There had to be dozens of them, easily. Yujun kept his eyes forward and ran, and he kept sprinting for quite a long while. Maybe it was because he had become a player; he barely felt tired at all. If anything, he felt fresh. It was a strange, bracing sensation he hadn't known in a very long time—utterly at odds with the situation he was in.
Awoo. The howling swelled. The wolves were close. Behind him, paws hammered the earth as they surged in at speed. Yujun glanced back just long enough to gauge the distance, then kept running without slowing down.
"Grrrr..."
"Arf! Graah!"
With their distinctive snarls, three or four wolves lunged at his back all at once. Goosebumps prickled up his spine. Yujun spun to meet them at exactly the right moment and swung. The blade bit deep into the flank of the lead wolf.
Yes!
With a yelp, the wolf was flung far away. But there hadn't been only one. Two more remained. One snapped its jaws toward him; the other slammed straight into him at a full charge. The instant he squeezed his eyes shut on instinct, a sound like hammered iron rang through the forest.
"Kyagh!"
"..."
The wolf that had body-checked him was the one that bounced away. The power of Legendary-grade armor.
I'm fine.
Realizing nothing was wrong with his body, Yujun smiled as if in relief. The other wolf fared no better. It had bitten down toward his neck with everything it had, and its fangs shattered to pieces.
Thank god... Defense actually applies.
On top of that, with the full armor equipped, almost no bare skin was exposed. Yujun closed in and started swinging without restraint. Slash—shhk! Wherever the blade touched, the wolves were carved apart. The superb cutting edge of a Legendary sword left them no means of withstanding it, and in a flash all three were dead.
Yujun stood there looking dazed, then hurriedly kicked off the ground.
I need to get out of here fast.
Zone 1 only grew harder to clear the longer you lingered. There was nothing to gain by dragging it out.
Still, that was my first fight, and I wasn't even nervous. I think I actually fought pretty well.
The performance of his weapon and armor was part of it. But more than anything, the effect of the Equanimity trait was considerable. Even in his first battle he hadn't gotten worked up; he had faced the wolves with perfect calm. Honestly, it didn't make sense.
Getting Equanimity really was nothing but luck.
After that, packs of wolves kept coming for his life without a moment's rest. Against his overwhelming attack and defense, though, their coordinated assaults were useless. And whenever the critical-hit option on the Super Novice Set procced, a shallow cut would suddenly drop a wolf to the brink of death.
This really does feel like a game.
The corpses were far too real, though, and he abandoned that thought at once. At a certain point Yujun stopped dead, drew a rough breath, and looked around.
Found the right place.
A graveyard steeped in gloom. In the Hell-difficulty tutorial, this graveyard was everything. He and every other user had always gotten caught on this stretch.
You have reached Zone 2.
A Golden Key lies somewhere in this place. Find the key.
So far, so good. But if it were only a matter of finding a key, it would never have been Hell difficulty. From here on, undead monsters would appear all over the place—undead that kept rising unless you destroyed the head. Hundreds of them. A number no ordinary level-1 user could possibly handle. Worse, levels didn't rise during the tutorial, which meant hunting the undead was meaningless. The key's location even changed with every run. Memorizing where it spawned and coming back for it was impossible.
Well. That doesn't mean there's no way at all.
The undead were far slower than the wolves he had just fought. At their fastest, they were only a little quicker than an ordinary grown man. Which meant they could not catch him for speed—not when item effects had raised his Strength and Agility by ten each. That was part of why he had challenged Hell difficulty without hesitation.
"Graaaah..."
"Uuuuh..."
Zombies and skeletons. They appeared, so many they could have filled a quarter of this vast graveyard. Now he had to play a deadly game of tag with these foul, hideous monsters, and he couldn't forget the treasure hunt for the key, either.
With a level-1 character, there was no way to shake them off.
Even if you used the undead's slow turning to slip away somehow, there were over a hundred of them. There was a reason they called it Hell. Now it was different. Getting caught from behind once wouldn't cost him his life.
If anything, I might be the one hunting them.
Yujun drove his sword into the head of a zombie shambling toward him with an eerie moan. Thunk. The blade pierced its skin as easily as a needle through cotton, and with that single strike the body collapsed. A zombie's greatest weakness was the head.
Then skeletons that had drawn near began hurling great stones. Thud! Crack! Gaunt as those arm bones were, the force behind the rocks was considerable. But that was all it amounted to. Yujun didn't feel so much as a flicker of impact from the barrage. He ignored the thrown stones and ran.
The site of the first gravestone. When he arrived, he stopped. Searching for the key demanded precision and thoroughness; that was the heart of Zone 2. Who could search carefully with undead monsters chasing them from behind? And yet—
I don't see it. Not yet.
Yujun kicked the gravestone hard. Boom! One kick, and the stone shattered completely. He scoured the surroundings with a hawk's eye, then sprinted to the second gravestone and led with his foot. Boom! The sound that burst out was like a bomb going off. That was how much power was packed into his kick.
Now this is what being carried by your gear looks like.
Thud, pat, thud! All the while, stones flying in hard struck the full armor and bounced off to no effect.
This feels like a max-level character walking into a low-level hunting ground.
Looking at the situation alone, it wasn't entirely wrong. So long as he watched his vitals, it seemed he might not get injured at all.
"Graaah..."
"Guhk!"
Zombies this time. Yujun turned and swung hard. Shhk! He had never learned swordsmanship, and he had no insight into it whatsoever. Even so, the blade's cutting power alone sheared their necks off clean. He swung again and again, and cut down a fair number of them.
Hatred of the living. The undead kept throwing themselves at him without end.
I'm starting to get a little tired...
The full sprint through the forest had something to do with it, but facing undead that never tired was no small burden. Conscious of his stamina, Yujun made every swing as economical as he could from then on. Even staggering cuts with less force behind them still brought zombies and skeletons down. The result was hardly different from when he had set his stance and put his whole body into it.
Ah... My attack power is already enough. I don't need to put that much strength into it.
The realization came late. Better to know it now than not at all. Once he did, the hideous monsters didn't frighten him in the slightest. Equanimity. His body moved as he willed, and he could read the situation with a cool head. Thanks to that, he almost never flailed while fighting the undead.
As clean as possible. Ease off the strength.
Trusting the attack power of the Super Novice Sword, he swung with nothing more than a slight twist of the wrist. Shhk! Skk! As if they were acting out a play, the zombies dropped one after another like puppets with their strings cut.
Boom! After smashing through to the fifth gravestone, Yujun swept his gaze around. His eyes went wide.
What? Already?
Zombie corpses lay everywhere. Even the creaking from the skeletons' stone-throwing arms was growing less and less frequent. Undead didn't tire, but some had rusted bones, and their arms were snapping clean off. The situation was good. Twenty-five gravestones still remained to be checked.
First, find the key.
Cutting down zombies as he passed, he began destroying the gravestones in order. As many as five lunged at once and clung to his ankles and shoulders, biting at the full armor and smearing it with filthy drool. Their weight was considerable, and for a moment his body staggered. Even in Strength, though, Yujun far outclassed them, thanks to the Strength option on the Super Novice Gloves. He shook himself hard and threw off the zombies that clung so stubbornly, then drove his sword into the heads of the ones rolling across the ground. Thunk! Thunk! Better to finish them early if he could. Zombies never got tired, no matter how much they moved.
War of the Gods was so realistic that stamina applied strictly to characters and monsters alike. Overuse a skill or move too hard, and you tired quickly, and your stat efficiency dropped. It was a system setting that had done its share of sharply raising the game's difficulty. The only ones free of that constraint were the undead—which was also why Zone 2 of Hell difficulty was so hard to escape.
Boom! One gravestone. Boom! Boom! Two. For a while, the graveyard rang with nothing but the sound of stones breaking. Destroying them one after another, Yujun found the Golden Key at the eighteenth.
"Figures..."
The key had been right there in the earth where the gravestone was planted. If he hadn't chosen to smash the stones, he never would have found it. Hell difficulty wasn't Hell for nothing. Had he not possessed Legendary-grade equipment, he would have had to strike each gravestone several times at the least—more than ten, at the most.
Ruler of the Forest
📍 Objective: Leave the graveyard and move to the heart of the forest.
⚔ Eliminate: The Ruler of the Forest, the Werewolf — 0/1
The notification window had popped up the moment the key was in his hand. Fortunately, it told him where to go next. Yujun stored the Golden Key in his inventory and straightened. Ordinarily he should have moved on to the next stage at once. He didn't.
I'll clear out every last one of them before I go.
He meant to sharpen his feel for combat and push the achievement rewards as high as they would go. The tutorial had no time limit of its own. The corner of Yujun's mouth lifted.