Newbie Hunting (1)
Kieeeek—
[Summon dismissed.]
The Emu, which had been bawling noisily at his side, dissolved into a spray of light and was sucked back into the reins.
Woobin lifted his head and looked up at the sky. A single pillar of light stood tall against the sunset sky.
It meant they had arrived at the lair of the Giant Death Tree — the predator that ruled the Violet Rainforest.
Ding—
[Ending the search for the Giant Death Tree.]
He shut down the search system, no longer of any use, and took stock of his surroundings. Trees studded with human faces frozen mid-scream. Violet earth stretching in every direction.
Grrrrr—
Even a pack of blue-skinned ogres. Every feature described in the community posts was on vivid display here.
As if to prove the point, a loud voice rang out through the area.
"Ms. Min Juhee! Where are you?! We've come to help you!"
He had counted five players in total on his way here. Every last one of them was churning through the region, desperate to find the newbie heroes.
'Higher caliber than I expected.'
Judging by both the quality of their mounts and the armor they wore, they looked to be heroes in the level 100s.
Normally, newbie hunting was the exclusive domain of middling players. The very act of defying the system to hunt fellow heroes piled up Karma penalties, and in the worst case a bounty landed on your head — leaving you at risk of being hunted by other heroes in turn.
But high-level heroes personally coming out to hunt newbies? Two possibilities came to mind. Guild-affiliated heroes who had come to scout fresh talent. Or Corrupted Heroes whose Karma was already so depleted that they no longer gave a damn about consequences.
Either way, to Woobin they were nothing more than competitors.
How could he find the newbie heroes faster than any of them? In the worst case, he might even end up in a standoff with another hero.
However much he had grown, and even with an instant-kill skill in hand, going up against heroes was still a delicate matter.
Ding—
[Activating the auction house.]
'Still, better than nothing.'
Woobin browsed the skill cards for a while, then purchased one.
Ding—
[You have purchased Advanced Martial Arts.]
◈ Effect: Allows you to perform skilled martial arts.
◈ Note: The higher your proficiency, the greater the activation rate.
For a D-rank skill card, it was a piece of trash priced about the same as an E-rank card. Under normal circumstances he wouldn't have spared it a glance. Martial arts was, after all, one of the most useless of all the combat disciplines in Elid.
But to the Woobin of today, it looked surprisingly serviceable.
Woobin frowned as he looked over his skill slots.
'It used to be six.'
Elid's skill system was unique: you equipped skill cards into slots in order to use them. You could swap them in and out at will, but the number of slots mattered. Before he'd been locked away in the Chronos dungeon, he'd had six slots in total. Now he had just three.
A shame, but what could he do? He'd simply have to earn more again.
Ding—
[Skill Card: Advanced Martial Arts has been equipped to the third slot.]
A faint light washed over his entire body. It was a strange sensation — as though something he had never experienced before had taken root in his flesh.
Whoosh— He flicked out his left fist, and the awkwardness was gone. A quick step, a light hook flowing into a left uppercut. It felt as though he had become a professional kickboxer.
He had no idea how useful it would prove in real combat, but it beat having nothing at all.
'Maybe I should level it up a little first.'
Normally, a passive skill like this would take years to reach level 10. The card he'd just bought was D-rank, so even by the most generous estimate it would take three years.
But not for Woobin.
His MP was full, too. All he had to do was step into Chronos's Workshop, throw a few punches, and stomp the ground once — and both Great Earthquake and Advanced Martial Arts would grow.
Woobin spread his palm as though he had made up his mind, and in that very instant, just as he was about to conjure the door—
"Kyaaah!"
Something rustled beyond the bushes — and a woman collapsed onto the ground.
A crisp office outfit, a stylish necklace and rings. Above all, the rectangular smartphone clutched in her hand announced exactly what she was: a newbie hero who had only just been transferred to Elid.
'Found her.'
With this many competitors, he'd expected claiming her first to be difficult — but things were going his way far more smoothly than expected.
If anything gave him pause, it was the woman's state.
"Sob... sob..."
She wept, tears and snot streaming down her face. Her whole body was caked in dust, her knees and palms scraped open and bleeding freely.
It was as if she'd been running from someone.
She flinched!
The moment the woman laid eyes on Woobin, she recoiled in terror as though she'd seen a ghost.
And sure enough—
Rustle—
A presence stirred behind the woman, and a man revealed himself.
"Running won't do you any good, you know?"
Dazzling golden armor. A golden radiance blazing from every inch of his body.
One look was enough to tell this bastard had been grinding through Elid for years.
"Huh? There was one more? Even better. I was already annoyed I couldn't farm this bitch, anyway."
Grinning a chilling grin, the man hurled something.
Thuck—
It was the head of a man who had died screaming.
"It's a dream... it has to be a dream..."
Panic-stricken, the woman clamped both hands over her ears and babbled to herself.
"Fuck, this is gonna drive me insane. Stay back!"
Wham!
The man in golden armor smashed his fist into the woman's head.
She crumpled to the ground like a doll with its strings cut. The blow must have been a heavy one — she didn't stir in the slightest.
"Fuck, she's out cold. Ugh, what a pain. Fine, let's start with you. Get over here and kneel."
The man barked the order at Woobin, irritation dripping from every word.
Woobin studied the hero with narrowed eyes.
Above the man's head, his name floated in crimson lettering.
'A wanted criminal...'
That mark was a penalty branded onto heroes whose Good-Evil Value had fallen below a set threshold, placing them on the bounty list.
'Three pieces of the Vital set, zero accessories.'
Woobin swiftly took stock of the man's gear and reached his conclusion.
'The guy's a total scrub.'
The Temple of Vital was a low-tier dungeon you could clear the moment you hit level 40 — and this man had a mere three items from it.
Even grading his level generously, he was somewhere around the 50s. Either a loser who had never adapted to Elid, or a greenhorn with barely a year or two of scraping by there.
And yet the man's conduct was villainy through and through. He sought out newbie heroes who knew nothing, stripped them of their items — and their lives. A textbook specimen of preying on the weak.
'Well, I'm not so different myself.'
Woobin was hardly any different from the man. Which was exactly why he felt no disgust.
Only delight.
'I wonder what he's carrying.'
His expectations were lower than they would have been for a newbie hero's gear — but even so, one more target to farm.
"Fuck, are you deaf? You little shit."
Whether the man knew what Woobin was thinking or not.
"If you can't understand a damn word, you need a beating!"
Whoosh—
The golden-armored hero swung his sword at Woobin.
His carelessly raised arm swept down in a horizontal arc.
Did the man not have a single proper swordsmanship skill?
'Level 50 was overrating him.'
The movements were so clumsy that even a level 50 estimate felt generous. His technique stat must have been just as pitiful, because every motion crawled along as though playing on slow-motion video.
Take the man's head as things stood? Or simply dodge?
After a brief deliberation, Woobin curled his hand into a fist.
'Subdue him for now.'
Woobin wasn't soft enough to spare someone who came at him with unprovoked threats and attacks.
But there was a procedure he had to see through first.
'Times like this, I really do envy Hyun-tae's trait.'
A player's items could only change hands if the owner relinquished ownership.
But Jung Hyun-tae's trait could break that rule.
Simply by activating it, the trait randomly stole items from the target.
The memory of lying paralyzed while his gear was peeled off him still made his blood boil — but he couldn't deny it was a useful trait.
With that trait, there would be no need to go to the trouble of keeping an enemy alive for torture.
Ding—
Fist Strike
CLANG!!!
And so Woobin struck the sword the man had swung — intending nothing more than a light subdual.
Ding—
[The Pendant of Fiery Steel absorbs 176 damage.]
As a stinging shock raced up through his fist, he could see it.
CLAAANG!!!!
The man's sword detonating into nothing before his eyes — and with a boom, the man's upper body bursting apart right along with it.