Hunting Villains - Part 1

Sanghyuk spent hours buried in books within the Great Library. The texts he pored over were the ten volumes of Chivalry, reading steadily through each from the first to the tenth without pause.

The moment he turned the final page of the concluding volume, the system notification he had been waiting for flashed before his eyes.

If a decision was not made within five minutes, the Ancient Knowledge would seep back into the pages of Chivalry. Reading through all ten volumes again would trigger the prompt once more, but there was no reason to hesitate now.

"Absorb."

Sanghyuk had come here specifically for this. Nodding calmly, he murmured the confirmation.

Swoooosh.

The Ancient Knowledge condensed into a brilliant shaft of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠light, sinking inward to suffuse Sanghyuk's spiritual core. Having secured his first Ancient Knowledge, Sanghyuk immediately opened his system window to inspect the innate enhancements and newly formed Soul Skills.

Four Soul Skills in total had bloomed from the Ancient Knowledge. While all four were currently Low-grade, Soul Skills advanced in rank as their proficiency accumulated. Depending on how much effort Sanghyuk invested, their destructive potential would scale continuously.

Raising proficiency naturally demanded frequent execution. Because skills carried raw, magnified power, mastering them was considered paramount in the combat meta of Eternal Life. Swung manually, three basic sword strikes were just ordinary swings. Channeled through Triple Slash, however, those same strikes lashed out with superior speed and overwhelming force. The same principle applied to defense: blocking with a blade was far firmer and more fluid when fortified by Blade Parry.

The trade-off was stamina. A Knight's skills drained stamina at a slightly higher rate, wearing the body down faster than unassisted combat. Even so, the sheer combat advantage made skills an indispensable necessity.

"Talk about a blast from the past," Sanghyuk muttered with a dry chuckle, staring at the translucent skill descriptions before him. First things first. I need to calibrate the Quick Settings.

Skills could be utilized in one of two ways. The standard method was direct system-assisted activation. If Sanghyuk triggered Triple Slash while holding a blade, the game engine seized control of his limbs, executing the three-strike sequence with robotic precision. Every skill behaved identically under default controls.

The fatal flaw of system assistance was predictability. The motion patterns were rigid and uniform, leaving obvious openings for experienced opponents to exploit. To overcome this limitation, the developers had implemented the Quick Setting system.

A Quick Setting allowed a skill to fire seamlessly out of a player's natural biomechanics. If Sanghyuk whipped his sword three times in rapid succession under his own volition, the system would recognize the motion and infuse the strikes with the parameters of Triple Slash on the fly. It was an extraordinary mechanic, but far from accessible to ordinary players.

It demanded an exceptionally high VRA alongside an intimate, instinctive understanding of the skill itself. Triggering a technique purely through one's own physical movement in the heat of chaotic combat was nearly impossible with average reflexes. In his past life, Quick Settings had been the exclusive domain of esports professionals and elite rankers possessing comparable mastery.

Sanghyuk had never been an official pro, but he had once reigned as a mysterious, revered expert whose combat prowess eclipsed professional players. Calibrating Quick Settings had been second nature to him. His VRA had deteriorated to garbage in his later years, robbing him of the physical ability to execute them, but the neuromuscular memory and instincts remained etched in his mind.

Between standard activation and Quick Settings, the numerical difference was subtle. Yet in high-level duels where victories were decided by fractions of a second, that tiny margin meant the difference between life and death.

Heading to an empty clearing on the outskirts of Falcon City, Sanghyuk drew his sword and began tuning his Quick Settings. This was an endeavor of raw personal capability; without the precise kinesthetic sense required to meld system algorithms into natural movement, proper calibration was impossible.

Sanghyuk repeated his swings, shifted his weight, and lunged forward across the dirt, weaving each skill into his muscle memory. Most players at this stage were completely oblivious to the mechanic. The option existed in the system menu, but few had any inkling of how to configure it. Ten days from now, intuitive top-tier players would begin grasping the concept, though mastering its practical application would take far longer.

Sanghyuk, by contrast, completed the calibration for all four skills in exactly one hour—a feat achieved through the convergence of past regression experience and raw talent.

"Tsk. I've gotten rusty. Back in the day, calibrating Low-grade skills took seconds."

He clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction. Years spent wasting away in despair had inevitably blunted his peak edge.

"Phew. That's enough for today."

Sanghyuk had been logged in continuously for sixteen hours. Under the Gaming Addiction Prevention Act, all users were forcibly disconnected after seventeen consecutive hours in virtual reality. Regulations mandated at least two hours of offline rest within every twenty-four-hour cycle, making a daily two-hour hiatus unavoidable.

Disconnecting from the capsule, Sanghyuk took a brief nap. No matter how rigorously he had trained his physical body to build stamina, adequate sleep was non-negotiable. Waking after just under two hours, he prepared a quick, utilitarian meal: high-nutrient cereal mixed with essential vitamin powder and low-fat milk. It tasted awful, but provided optimal fuel. Chewing through the bland mush, he pulled up the major gaming forums on his monitor.

Skimming through the banter, Sanghyuk navigated over to InGames, the largest strategy hub.

The situation on InGames was identical. The few guides posted were elementary at best, completely buried beneath an avalanche of bewildered questions.

"Still stumbling in the dark, as expected."

The open beta had barely been live for a week. Naturally, players knew next to nothing. More striking was the fact that the free open beta was scheduled to end tomorrow. While the Endless Grassland would remain free indefinitely as an introductory tutorial zone, crossing the dimensional threshold into Trinark required a paid subscription.

"Come to think of it, Raon Soft didn't run a single promotional package or discount event when they launched commercial service, did they? Talk about absolute arrogance... or supreme confidence."

Virtually every gaming studio launched commercial services with aggressive discounts, package bundles, or lavish community events. Raon Soft had simply flipped the switch, letting the game flow into formal service without a whisper of promotion. No launch events, no monetization sales. Critics and players had lambasted them relentlessly, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but Raon Soft never budged from their rigid non-interventionist stance.

Before the revelation that the world's most colossal venture capital firm, the SJ Investment Company, stood behind them, countless analysts had mocked their stubborn independence as financial suicide. Yet history proved Raon Soft right. Their hands-off policy paid off in spades. They barely even monitored internal player affairs, restricting their oversight strictly to game-breaking bugs and external illicit software. Everything else was left entirely to the players' collective agency.

Such an audacious policy was only viable because Raon Soft had engineered an immaculate, virtually unbreakable virtual world. Had an unpolished title attempted the same, it would have collapsed within weeks.

Sanghyuk tossed the empty bowl aside and swallowed his dietary supplements. He had no intention of burning out after a couple of days; protecting his physical conditioning was a cornerstone of his long-term strategy. His mandatory offline rest complete, he stepped back into the capsule and logged into Eternal Life.

Ancient Knowledge engraved. Soul Skills acquired. Quick Settings calibrated. There was only one task remaining on his itinerary: hunting the predators.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Roughly ten days following the launch of official service marked the peak of the Outlaw era. Shortly thereafter, the upper echelon of players—those who had quietly grinded levels and experimented with builds—would launch coordinated counteroffensives. Within a single week, the crimson-eyed PKers would be systematically wiped out.

Once they're exterminated, finding enough Outlaws will become nearly impossible for months. I have to finish the hunt within the week and secure the title.

The iron was hot. Missing this window meant forfeiting the Unique title, First Villain Hunter, for good.

"Let's start with the Valley of Phantoms."

The Valley of Phantoms was among the closest hunting grounds to Falcon City. Populated primarily by restless spirits and minor specters, it was an ideal zone: provided one possessed no phobia of ghosts, the mobs were simple to defeat and rewarded generous amounts of Karma.

Inevitably, travelers flocked there in droves. Yet despite the heavy traffic, the zone never felt suffocatingly overcrowded. The sheer scale of Eternal Life was simply too vast. In truth, the Valley of Phantoms alone spanned an expanse equivalent to five to seven major hunting zones in competing virtual reality titles combined.

Even considering it was designed as an entry-level starter zone, its geography was absurdly vast. Surrounding Falcon City were ten distinct hunting grounds of comparable magnitude. Even with a unified mega-server and an explosive influx of concurrent users, there was never a shortage of prey.

All of this was made possible by the foundation of Planet Trinark itself, whose planetary surface area was nearly forty times larger than the world maps of competing games.

Countless travelers had arrived in this boundless new world. Given absolute freedom, many chose to indulge their darker instincts first, giving birth to a surging plague of red-eyed Outlaws.

Yet under the harsh systemic penalties governing their existence, their reign was inherently doomed to be short-lived.