Hunting Villains (2)
“Let’s bag a few more and call it a day.”
Taoxin and Jin Geming were longtime friends who had entered Eternal Life together during its open beta. Hailing from China, both had followed news of the revolutionary virtual reality MMORPG for years and jumped in without a second thought the moment the servers went live.
Thanks to their respectable VRA ratings and sharp grasp of game mechanics, they had managed to pull ahead of the average player base early on. Along the way, however, they made a fatal misstep—they chose the path of the Villain.
“Income’s looking pretty dry today,” Taoxin muttered, shaking his head in dismay.
“Too many Villains running around lately,” Jin Geming grunted. “It’s scaring off all the general users we’re supposed to fleece.”
“Should we just jump other Villains then?”
“What’s the point? We don’t get a single drop of Black Karma from killing them, and we can’t take their loot either.”
Villain players were fully capable of slaughtering one another, but doing so offered zero mechanical incentive.
“Tsk. What a waste of time.”
“Nothing we can do about it. Unless another Villain gets in our way, we ignore them.”
Taoxin and Jin Geming prowled through the Valley of Phantoms, scanning the mist for fresh targets. Both sat at Level 19, a tier well within the upper echelons of the current player base. On top of that, they possessed the Ancient Knowledge of the ‘Archer’ and the ‘Swordsman’ respectively. High levels, specialized Ancient Knowledge, and a total lack of moral restraint made them a lethal duo. Like hungry hyenas scouring the wasteland, they combed every corner of the valley in search of blood.
“Gasp… haah…”
Ten minutes later, Taoxin was sprinting for his life, ragged breaths tearing from his throat. As his boots pounded against the jagged stone, his mind raced, trying desperately to comprehend what had gone so terribly wrong.
Ten minutes ago, they had spotted a solitary traveler—an apparently helpless victim, ripe for the taking. At least, that was what they had believed until the man severed Jin Geming’s head in the blink of an eye.
It had unfolded so fast Taoxin still could not process it.
Their signature ambush was straightforward: Taoxin would open fire from maximum range to pin the target down, while Jin Geming snuck in from the flank for a lethal strike. It was a simple formula, but ruthlessly effective. Through this tactic alone, they had slaughtered countless unsuspecting players.
Yet that lone swordsman had sidestepped Taoxin’s opening arrow with casual disdain. When the suppressive fire failed to rattle him, Jin Geming’s surprise attack collapsed before it even began. In fact, Jin Geming was the one who walked straight into a meat grinder.
Parrying the ambush with an effortless flick of his blade, the swordsman proceeded to dismantle Jin Geming completely. Desperate to turn the tide, Taoxin unleashed every Soul Skill in his arsenal, firing a hail of arrows. But the swordsman merely manipulated Jin Geming’s balance, using him as a human shield so that Taoxin’s own arrows buried themselves into his partner’s back.
Ironically, because both were flagged as Villains, friendly fire was enabled between them. A hazard that general users never had to worry about turned into a catastrophic vulnerability, transforming the two partners into each other’s worst liability.
Then came three blinding slashes.
The blade carved through Jin Geming’s arm, sheared across his torso, and tore through his throat in a single fluid cadence. Jin Geming collapsed without offering an ounce of meaningful resistance.
The moment his partner fell, Taoxin broke into a dead sprint. The man they had marked as prey was not a victim at all—he was an unmitigated monster.
Where the hell did a monster like that even come from?!
Taoxin had killed scores of players, including seasoned veterans with high levels and sharp reflexes. Yet he had never encountered anything resembling this.
You can’t beat someone like that… It’s impossible!
He felt a twinge of guilt toward Jin Geming, but survival took precedence over loyalty. Unfortunately for Taoxin, that hope was purely delusional.
Whir—crack!
A shadow plummeted from the rocks above, slamming heavily into Taoxin’s back.
“Kuh!”
Hit at full sprint, Taoxin lost his footing and tumbled violently across the gravel. Looming over him was the very swordsman who had just decapitated his partner—Sanghyuk.
Taoxin had foolishly believed he could run, but escape had never been an option. Sanghyuk had spent hundreds of hours traversing the Valley of Phantoms in his previous life. Predicting Taoxin’s escape vector was second nature, allowing him to take a high ridge shortcut and intercept the archer with effortless precision.
“Ugh… Who the hell are you?!”
Taoxin shrieked in Chinese, but Sanghyuk understood every word. A simultaneous translation system developed five years prior for the Dive Network translated foreign speech into floating subtitles along the right edge of Sanghyuk’s field of vision in less than a second. While crowded cross-linguistic gatherings could clutter one’s HUD with text, the feature could be toggled on or off at will.
“Does that really matter right now?”
Schwing.
Sanghyuk had no intention of wasting breath on small fry. His mind was focused entirely on hunting down one hundred Outlaws to secure the First Villain Hunter title.
Taoxin scrambled to his feet, desperate to flee, but Sanghyuk moved far faster. Channeling a low-grade Charge skill through a sudden burst of acceleration, Sanghyuk erased the distance between them in an instant.
What followed was a Three-Stage Slash!
The Traveler’s Treasure Sword flashed like silver lightning, raking across Taoxin’s chest and arms.
“Aargh!”
While the virtual world eliminated actual physical agony, it replaced damage with a deeply unpleasant sensory dampener—a foul, suffocating sensation akin to being doused in icy sludge. Taoxin’s health pool was not entirely depleted, and he swung his short bow in a frantic bid to fight back. Particles of white luminescence scattered from his wounds, signaling critical damage, yet he still stood.
None of his flailing mattered. Sanghyuk operated on a level far beyond his comprehension, predicting every clumsy swing of Taoxin’s close-quarters defense, ducking beneath his reach, and etching fresh crimson wounds across his avatar.
Taoxin could not even endure for a single minute.
Having chosen the Ancient Knowledge of the ‘Archer,’ relying on ranged superiority, he was entirely ill-equipped to withstand Sanghyuk’s melee onslaught. Jin Geming, who possessed the ‘Swordsman’ knowledge, had failed to last three minutes; Taoxin crumbling in less than sixty seconds was only natural.
Thrust—squelch!
As Taoxin’s health hit zero, the Traveler’s Treasure Sword punched cleanly through his heart. Having enabled the death-skipping feature, Taoxin dissolved before he could even register how he had died.
“Forty-seven…” Sanghyuk murmured, sheathing his sword as he straightened up.
Taoxin was his forty-seventh kill. Only fifty-three remained. At his current pace, he would easily reach the hundred mark within four days.
The wilderness was virtually crawling with Outlaws right now. It was the quintessential case of having more fish than water.
Sanghyuk scooped up the gear Taoxin had dropped. Neither Taoxin nor Jin Geming had yielded top-tier treasures, but their belongings were far from worthless.
My inventory’s getting stuffed with miscellaneous loot. I’ll need to make a quick trip back to Falcon City to consign everything.
Hunting Outlaws was exceptionally lucrative. Aside from the milestone of the First Villain Hunter title, claiming a share of their accumulated Black Karma and scooping up their dropped items offered immense profits. Because Outlaws were barred from entering safe zones and could not utilize shared bank vaults, they carried their entire fortunes on their persons. Whenever one fell, they scattered a veritable fortune across the dirt.
For a hunter like Sanghyuk, it was the ultimate windfall. Slaying Outlaws allowed him to amass Karma far faster than any conventional grinding method could ever provide.
“No critical system bugs have been detected. There were four minor NPC artificial intelligence anomalies, but ‘Chaos’ deployed its internal correction protocols and rectified all four instances.”
The development lead concluded his briefing. Because this was a comprehensive review meeting held shortly after the official launch, department heads from across the entire company were gathered in the virtual conference room.
“Chaos handles anything that happens within the game world anyway,” Seo Wontae said smoothly. “The development team should direct its attention toward external threats—DDoS attacks, server incursions, or unauthorized third-party injection programs.”
Chaos was the crown jewel of Raon Soft, a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence forged through ten exhaustive years of research. In truth, it was no exaggeration to say that Eternal Life existed solely because of Chaos. The AI functioned as the game’s omniscient creator god, monitoring and governing every ripple within the virtual reality from a transcendent vantage point.
That did not mean human developers were obsolete. Guiding and maintaining Chaos was a monumental task in its own right, which was why Seo Wontae personally kept a tight leash on the development team.
“Operations team, how does user influx look?”
“Growth is accelerating exponentially, sir. Practically every major gaming forum and social media platform is raving about EL’s depth. We expect the player count to climb even faster over the coming weeks.”
“Good. As the active base swells, corporate sponsorships and in-game ad placements will resolve themselves naturally, won’t they?”
“Yes, sir. Once the traffic reaches threshold capacity, commercial sponsors will be lining up outside our door without us having to lift a finger.”
“Take your time with them. We’re in no rush.”
Seo Wontae offered an easy smile. Even a visionary of his stature had felt a sliver of apprehension before launch, but those doubts were gone. Eternal Life was destined to dominate the globe.
“Are there any other operational concerns?”
“Well… the sheer volume of Outlaw players cropping up has become somewhat concerning,” the game balancing team lead ventured cautiously. Given Raon Soft’s ironclad principle of non-intervention, addressing in-game player dynamics required walking on eggshells.
“Under no circumstances will we intervene internally just because the Outlaw population has spiked,” Seo Wontae countered firmly. “I have stressed this repeatedly: Eternal Life is built on absolute freedom. If the Outlaw population swells, the player base must adapt and resolve the issue themselves.”
“Of course, sir. But if the Outlaws grow completely unchecked, general users might suffer severe losses and churn out—”
“How narrow-minded can you be?” Seo Wontae chided, clicking his tongue in exasperation. “Did I say we should just sit with our hands folded? We do not intervene inside the game, but that doesn’t mean we can’t steer things from the outside! What happens if you discreetly leak information onto community boards hinting that hunting Outlaws yields massive hidden rewards? The problem solves itself. Must I spoon-feed every single strategy to you? Leaking subtle breadcrumbs to balance the ecosystem without altering world parameters is an operational tactic I authorized from day one.”
Wilted beneath the CEO’s sharp rebuke, the balancing lead could only bow his head and offer flustered apologies.
“And the operations team shouldn’t be slacking off just because Chaos handles in-game surveillance,” Seo Wontae added, sweeping his gaze across the screen. “Keep your eyes glued to external community sentiment and track player trends around the clock. We must stay aware of every shift within our world.”
Seo Wontae’s philosophy was simple: never lay a direct hand on the world inside, but subtly steer the tides from the outside. That was the unyielding doctrine governing Eternal Life.