Quarry Trolling

“The current problem with our raid party is the insufficient number of search teams…”

“Hold on a second. Representative. Quarry? What exactly is that?”

Yun Cho-a shot her hand up with the question.

This was supposed to be “class time,” a session explaining the competitive raid currently being broadcast on screen. That was why she was sitting at this cursed one-piece desk normally only found in university lecture halls.

But suddenly—quarry? As in, a literal stone quarry?

Yun Cho-a stared forward with a puzzled frown. There stood Professor Lee, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as always, calmly polishing his antique taped glasses.

“My, my. History is a window that reveals both the present and the future. I have always emphasized the importance of history, yet it appears student Yun Cho-a has been neglecting her studies. It can’t be helped. Class president.”

“……”

“Class president?”

“Haa… Class president Chae Dong-ha.”

Chae Dong-ha, who had gone from SS-grade genius leader to sudden class president, let out a deep sigh and began explaining the quarry to Yun Cho-a.

“In this context, a quarry refers to a magic-stone mining operation. You deliberately keep a defense-type gate from being cleared and maintain it indefinitely to farm stones.”

“…Is something like that even possible?”

“Yes, it is.”

You simply slaughter the endlessly spawning monsters and harvest their magic stones.

No movement required—just stand there and smash their skulls like a miner. That’s why it earned the name quarry.

At first glance, it looked like the pinnacle of efficiency. It would be foolish not to use it.

Yet the reason this method was so obscure that even Yun Cho-a had never heard of it was simple.

The damage far outweighed the gains.

“Using the quarry method contaminates and destabilizes the gate. This affects the surrounding environment, triggering floods, earthquakes, or—in the worst cases—completely unexpected Countercurrents.”

“…The Bureau must have shut it down.”

“Exactly. A natural response, since it involves gates. They probably would have kept doing it if the stones were high quality. The method is that tempting. However, the magic stones obtained this way are also poor in quality. In other words…”

“That’s enough. What matters right now isn’t the quarry itself but the method of creating one—specifically, how to generate monsters infinitely. We can stop there.”

Once they had the general idea, it was time to return to the main topic.

Professor Lee adjusted his taped glasses once more.

“Let me cut straight to the conclusion. The key is to transfer authority over the wave spawn point from the hunter to the gate itself.”

The instant the monster wave spawn point’s authority belonged to the gate rather than a hunter, monsters would generate endlessly. They would continue until the gate was cleared or every living creature inside left, triggering failure.

“Then let’s use the Oasis’s Guardian—the gate we’re currently attacking—as an example. Student Dong-ha, where do the waves originate from in that gate?”

“The bases. The oases.”

“And the method to activate an oasis, Yun Cho-a?”

“The key?”

“Correct. After defeating a set number of monsters, when the lake begins to sparkle like this, you insert the key.”

Tap, tap. He pointed at the silver key displayed as a photo on the whiteboard.

It was an item that dropped from elite monsters hiding throughout the desert.

One for stage one. Two for stage two. Three for stage three.

If you cleared all the way to the final fifteenth stage the normal way, the boss—an enormous basilisk called Oasis Usurper Kul—would appear.

In a standard run, the guild that claimed the boss first usually won. The gate had been designed that way from the beginning.

But Lee Shin didn’t like that normal approach at all.

It felt like stepping onto a board the opponent had prepared, didn’t it?

No matter that it was a super team he had built himself, he could not accept a rookie guild that had existed for less than a year standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them. Even in fair competition, not yet!

“Activating a base is done by throwing the key into the lake. So what’s the method to transfer that base’s authority to the gate? Simple. The entity throwing the key simply needs to be the gate itself rather than a human.”

“…The gate?”

“If it’s the gate.”

“No need to overcomplicate it. What is the true agent of a gate? When you hear the word gate, what comes to mind?”

“??”

“??”

The pair mulled it over.

Then Lee Shin delivered his answer, and both their faces flooded with shock.

“Monsters. It’s monsters.”

“!!”

“Monsters. Just have a monster throw it.”

Yes. The entity throwing the key simply needed to be a monster created by the gate.

Then the base’s authority would naturally transfer to the gate. At that moment the base would transform into a quarry, endlessly vomiting out monster waves.

Until the gate was cleared—or until no humans remained inside it.

“Yun Cho-a, what is the current problem with our raid party?”

“We don’t have enough search teams.”

“And the purpose of those search teams?”

“To locate the boss faster.”

“Then, student Dong-ha, what is our guild’s greatest strength?”

“Our combat power, including our sustain.”

So what was Mir Guild’s guaranteed path to victory at this stage?

First, tie down the other guilds’ search teams so they could never reach the boss.

“There are between twenty and twenty-two bases in total. If we activate every single one except the four main bases belonging to each guild? That desert will be flooded with monsters. In that situation, do you think the search teams will have the luxury of casually hunting elite monsters for keys?”

Absolutely not.

Lee Shin was certain that once the hellscape he envisioned unfolded, searching would no longer be the priority. From that point on, every ounce of effort would have to go toward pure survival.

And in that scenario, the side with overwhelming sustain and combat power would…

“…own the entire board. Hehehe.”

Trolling.

The act of breaking rules or deviating from normal play.

But whether it was negative or not, it ultimately changed the flow of the game. People panicked because they hadn’t expected it. They cursed because they were panicking.

And changing the flow of the game like this was the field where the man who had eventually carved his name atop every single ranking excelled the most.

The ultimate veteran, Lee Shin.

“All right. Let’s get this party started.”

Rumble rumble rumble——

The sound of countless feet shook the desert sand.

Soon a dust cloud rose beyond the horizon, thick enough to blot out the sky.

It was not mere rhetoric. An absolutely staggering monster wave surged forward like a tidal wave. The grains of desert sand were no longer visible. From one end of the horizon to the other, horrifying numbers of monsters poured in from every direction.

And within that catastrophe, humans looked unbearably small.

“Run! Run away!!”

“Goddamniiit!!”

“Hey! Forget the key, just run! Hurry!!”

The moment they witnessed the wave, the search teams fled without a single backward glance.

Speed specialists, stealth-and-search experts, even the hunter who had finally located an elite Sand Golem after hours of effort—everyone, regardless of ability or guild, simply ran for their lives.

They had no choice. The monsters flooding toward them were Gnoll Archers and Thorn Hyenas.

One specialized in ranged attacks, the other in coordinated pack hunting.

And that wasn’t all. Even as they fled, Sandmen were bursting out of the sand everywhere.

If they clumsily tried to fight and got swallowed by that hell…

It would be over. Forget clearing the gate—this would become a genuine catastrophe!

The raid had turned into a complete disaster.

It hadn’t been this bad at the start. The first signs had appeared around the third day.

While avoiding Sandmen to locate Sand Golems, the search teams had begun spotting gnolls carrying bows and hyenas bristling with thorns.

Just one or two at first, wandering the desert. At the time everyone assumed they had simply wandered out from a nearby base.

So they hunted them casually.

But on the fourth day those one or two became small parties. On the fifth the small parties became larger groups. On the sixth the groups became armies.

And now, on the seventh day, how could they even describe what they were seeing? A tidal wave? No, it was simpler to say the desert itself had become the wave.

East, west, south, north.

Every direction except the sky was packed solid with monsters.

The eerie glow of their eyes was more visible than the sand itself.

The dry wind that once carried the scent of sand now reeked of monsters. The desert’s silence had been replaced by their grotesque cries.

They were already running with their tails between their legs, pride shredded and nerves frayed. Now the monsters’ howls scraped their sanity even further, and the fleeing hunters began cursing the mastermind behind this nightmare as if on cue.

“Fucking lunatics. Sons of bitches.”

“Those Mir bastards! This is way too far, no matter how you look at it!”

“They’re seriously insane!!”

They were, after all, major hunters from major guilds.

No matter how few the initial sightings were, once base monsters started appearing before search teams, they had sensed something was wrong and begun scouting.

Sure enough, Mir Guild had been operating a special strike team, stirring up every base they could find.

At first the others had wondered what on earth they were doing.

The nearly three-meter-tall suit was one thing, but the sight of Kang Malsuk exerting pressure across the entire field from a single spot, Baek Yeon-woo the genius slicing immobilized monsters with his whip-like Cheon-bong, or Park Su-bin the Giant God crushing whole areas with a single punch from his mechanical giant—everyone’s first reaction had been pure confusion.

It made sense. Even Yeo Eun-seo—known as the Guardian and said to possess the second-best mind after the Mountain King—had barely figured it out. How could anyone else understand?

Fortunately or unfortunately, their questions were answered fairly quickly.

They witnessed the moment the genius Baek Yeon-woo used his Cheon-bong like a game of cat’s cradle to manipulate desert gnolls into dropping a key into an oasis.

From that point on, the monsters stopped attacking the oasis. Instead they only hunted humans.

After setting that nightmare in motion for the Mir team, they moved on to the next base without hesitation.

The last time anyone had checked, fourteen bases had been activated. That was yesterday, so… how many were active now?

To answer their unspoken question, the Mir strike team including Kang Malsuk had just finished activating all seventeen oases.

Every oasis except the four main bases belonging to each guild.

The fleeing hunters here didn’t know the exact number, but they understood one thing with crystal clarity.

The search phase was over.

Those elite monsters were already difficult to find. Now they were supposed to hunt them while breaking through that monster wave? Alone?

Impossible.

The problem was that these people were the search teams.

If even the fastest, most survivable members with the best detection abilities had given up, it meant virtually no one left in any guild could continue searching.

No search teams meant no keys. No keys meant they could not advance to the next stage. And without the next stage, the boss was nothing but a dream.

In short, gate progress had ground to a complete halt.

That alone was an emergency, but the search teams soon realized they didn’t even have the luxury of worrying about it.

“Hey, block it!! It’s breaking through over there!!”

“Run faster!!”

“What are you doing?! Stop staring and get over here to help block!!”

Yes.

The main bases were under attack.

Search? Keys? Next stage? Boss?

After seeing the monster wave that stretched endlessly beyond the barricades, who had any attention to spare for those things?

Lee Shin’s grinning face seemed to flash across the sky for a brief instant, and finally one of the search team members spat out the words.

“Fuck. They’re playing the game like absolute shit.”

It was the highest praise imaginable.