The Cash-Farming Hero's Capitalist Streaming – Episode 31

If Parrying is a defensive technique built around deflecting an attack away from you, then Blocking is a technique built around bouncing that attack right back off.

Which means that, for most projectiles governed by the laws of physics, all you really needed was a solid grasp of the angle of reflection — get that right, and you could send them flying in whatever direction you pleased with nothing but your shield.

And the class that took this principle to its absolute extreme and turned it into a counterattack skill? That would be the Ghost Guardian.

More precisely, it relied on an insanely difficult technique known as Ghost Parrying.

I nearly ripped every hair out of my head practicing that one back in the day.

If you ground Ghost Parrying's proficiency to its absolute limit, you could theoretically bounce a shuriken thrown from dozens of meters away straight back into the thrower's own skull.

Of course, I didn't have the dedicated skill for it, so pulling off something that precise was beyond me... but even a rough approximation was more than enough.

Fwoosh-!

WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-!!!

This place was, quite literally, a fifty-fifty split between water and fish — a tank's paradise.

All I had to do was block the incoming fireballs, nudge their trajectory a few degrees, and let gravity and chaos do the rest. With that writhing pile of ghosts packed shoulder to shoulder, landing a redirected hit wasn't even work.

And since I was the one in the tank position, standing right up in the mobs' faces, even a sloppy aim was more than close enough to connect.

Fwoooosh- BAM-!

So our resident pyromancer only needed to hurl fireballs in the general direction of the enemies. Just spam and forget.

And when she did, the result looked exactly like this.

Ghosts were paper-thin, so a single burst of flame was enough to burn them to nothing in an instant.

...et cetera, et cetera.

See that?

Not even that hard, is it?

But I wasn't bluffing — it genuinely wasn't all that difficult.

The really hard part is the fully-mastered Ghost Parrying. What I was doing right now was easier than combining sword and aura.

Granted, if I'd never actually played a Ghost Guardian myself, I wouldn't have been able to pull this off so effortlessly... but still.

So then, dear Divine Seat hyung-nim of mine...

Would it kill you to stop stalling and just admit you were wrong already?

If you're holding out hope that I might fail the 'absorb 40% of incoming damage' condition on your mission... allow me to express my sincere condolences in advance.

To be fair, it was true that I wasn't taking much damage, seeing as I was deflecting and nullifying everything — but that wasn't actually the problem.

The problem was that my party members, every last one of them, were simply not getting hit at all.

Though I honestly had no idea why my damage share was a full 35%.

I could only assume that contributing to Lowell's fire magic accuracy got factored into the damage-dealt calculation somehow...

Anyway — if this isn't a tank, then what on earth is?

I soak up all the aggro. I position myself so the DPS can unload freely.

No matter how you slice it, that's the textbook definition of a perfect tank.

"Looks like things have settled down. Let's move out."

"Ah... uh, yes! Moving!"

My party members, who had been wearing dumbfounded expressions, nodded along in a daze at my words.

"Hurry up, oppa! What are you doing standing there spacing out?"

"Ah... that... I was just... a little taken aback, is all..."

Leaving Bellic behind to stammer out his excuses, I naturally took point at the front of the party.

Come to think of it, something had been feeling off... oh. One of my routines was missing.

Once a battle ends, the field harvesting has to happen — but there were no corpses left behind.

Ghosts. This is exactly the problem with them.

And the trash drops they left behind didn't exactly look appetizing either...

"Hmm."

Once I clear the class main quest, I'm never coming back here.

Lost in that thought, I kept walking, and before long we arrived at a passage leading down toward the mine's lower depths.

About an hour had passed.

In that time, we had descended deep into the abandoned mine.

That naturally meant plenty of combat along the way, and by the end of it I had gained a full level.

The grinding I'd suffered just to crawl from 19 to 20 felt like a distant memory. This leveling speed was outright insane.

But honestly, it wasn't anything to be surprised about.

Not when you considered the level bracket of the monsters I was currently hunting.

The highest-level monster huntable on Beginner's Island had topped out at a mere Level 20.

So if I was farming Level 40+ monsters that granted at least twenty times the experience, and my level wasn't climbing — wouldn't that be the stranger outcome?

I should be able to hit 30 without any trouble.

I'd run a rough calculation on the experience curve, and setting aside about ten days to reach Level 30 seemed generous.

What, you gained a level in an hour or two and it still takes ten days to hit 30?

Well — because the experience table scales in multiples, almost without exception.

Yes, the amount of EXP I'd earn would rise as I gained access to higher-level hunting grounds, but even factoring that in, ten days was the realistic estimate.

Which meant I'd be hitting Level 30 in about half a month.

And I believe the average player needs roughly a year to reach 30, don't they?

Even judging by my own standards, that pace was genuinely blistering.

During the beta test, my personal best for hitting 30 had been around forty days, if I recalled correctly.

"By the way, Dave-nim, you've already completed your 2nd Class Advancement, haven't you?"

"I'd guess you're somewhere in the mid-to-late fifties."

"Right? If you were over 60, there's no way you'd still be hunting down here..."

"Haah, hidden 2nd advancement classes really are on another level."

"Man, I want to advance my class too."

Meanwhile, over on my end, the misunderstanding just kept snowballing.

It was probably too late to correct it by now.

They seemed to have concluded that my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠counterattack performance was some hidden-class skill or another.

"Dave-nim, seriously, what level are you? Even a hint."

"That's a secret."

At the very least, I had never personally told a lie.

So my conscience was perfectly clear.

Excuse me?

Anyway, setting aside the Constellations' utterly unfounded slander(?), we pressed on toward our destination.

Wait, our destinations aren't the same?

Pedantically speaking, they were different — but they were practically the same spot, so it didn't matter.

Both the party leader hyung-nim and I needed to reach the very bottom of this abandoned mine.

He needed to take down the mine boss, a colossal rock-worm, to clear his quest — while I needed to find the statue that only revealed itself after that thing was slain.

So with that shared objective in hand, our party grew steadily more coordinated as we descended deeper and deeper into the mine.

As the hours passed, we even got a little friendlier.

"So, Boss-nim... with skill like yours, why aren't you in a guild?"

"I suppose you could say I don't much like being tied down."

What did throw me for a loop, though, was discovering that this hyung-nim — whom I'd assumed had to be in his mid-forties at minimum — was only a single year older than me.

Not one year older than a twenty-six-year-old, mind you. One year older than a thirty-six-year-old.

He'd been speaking to me so casually because he assumed an eleven-year ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gap, after all...

Well, I couldn't say it bothered me.

"......"

As someone who had, back in his youth, actually been told by a member of the opposite sex that he was handsome, I found this deeply, deeply unfair.

I mean, who picks Leo as the comparison baseline?

Stand anyone next to that kid — even certified heartthrobs — and they'd all end up looking like squids by comparison...

So wasting any more mental energy on this point would only be a loss for me.

And just as I was about to sink into a little depression over it all—

The message responsible for my happiness popped up with flawless timing.

Two hours had slipped by without my noticing.

Haah... magnificent!

THIS is what life is about.

Absolutely delicious.

Ah...

So I was just lucky, huh.

Pardon?

Suddenly I have never been so motivated in my entire life.

Three hundred thousand LP a day?

Wouldn't that make you an overnight tycoon?

I briefly pictured a million-LP piece of equipment shattering into pieces, and nearly soiled myself.

Forget how much you made — a loss like that would send anyone spiraling into depression on the spot...

Clearly, the ranker lifestyle was not suited to a devoted rice-eater like myself.

"......"

Anyway, as I traded banter with the Constellations and stoked my motivation—

One more level gained, and we had nearly arrived at our destination.

Time-wise... roughly three and a half hours had passed since we'd entered the mine.

In the darkest corner of the pitch-black mine shaft loomed a portal — a small, violet-purple gate no bigger than an adult, oozing a sinister, clammy aura.

"We finally found it."

"Everyone, please take a moment to prepare yourselves..."

Once the quick preparations were done, Bellic stepped up before the portal with a grave, resolute expression.

An Epic monster over Level 50 was waiting on the other side, so his nerves were hardly unreasonable.

"We're... going in now? Everyone's ready, right?"

For the record, this bearded hyung-nim seems to be a whole lot more of a scaredy-cat than his looks suggest.

Weren't you planning to come here without me in the first place? Why so terrified?

Come to think of it, the original three of them probably... wouldn't have been able to take down the Crite Wyrm.

"Ready, oppa."

"I'm ready as well."

"I'm ready too, hyung-nim."

"Then let's go!"

But this party had me in it — and I was someone who knew the 'Mineral Worm' inside and out.

And this particular creature was...

BOOM- RUMBLE-RUMBLE-!!!

...one of the precious few Epic monsters in the entire game that could be farmed for free.